If any other director had made the spellbinding, visceral Mayan epic Apocalypto, the film would be championed and unquestionably be discussed in Oscar worthy terms. -- Bruce Bennett


I found it amusing and perhaps even amazing that so many critics found fault with this latest Mel Gibson effort. It's like when you post things on the internet that users can vote on and you wind up either amused or amazed that the voting many times comes down to the personality of the writer and not the content of the words. I suppose it's human nature, but it's just plain sad, if you ask me. I mean, did you know Günter Grass was a Nazi when you were salivating over Tin Drum? Did you hate Atlas Shrugged just because Ayn Rand thought folks who work harder than others might be allowed to own nicer stuff? Did you dislike On the Road because it was a piece of worthless crap disguised as a novel? Oh, wait. That last one is just a personal reflection on a recent anniversary of the said piece of worthless crap. It's not a good example in this paragraph. Let's just move on to paragraph two.

I didn't watch The Passion of the Christ because I knew how it was going to end and I didn't need to pay my own money to have someone try and convert me to some religious deal. I saw Braveheart out of the corner of my eye when it was on commercial TV one afternoon, and it didn't do much for me. Mel Gibson as an actor always sort of creeped me out. That final scene when he was disemboweled and tortured with lit cigarettes stayed with me for a while. I think it was when the torturer brought out his little bag of tools that he was going to use. Having him carefully choose the tools with that lit Chesterfield hanging out of his mouth was quite disturbing to me.

Anyway, that's all to say that I don't really know much about Mel Gibson as a director. I do know that he's flat fucking nuts, as can be easily ascertained just by a cursory glance at the bonus material in Apocalypto. Thirty seconds of looking at his eyes as he discusses making this movie is enough to let you know that he's lucky to be allowed to walk the streets without a restraining device, and that he will likely end up in some horrible catastrophe of his own making before it's all said and done. However, that could be said about many folks out in Hollywood, so I set myself to wondering why this particular fellow generates so much bad press when he puts out what I thought was a damn good movie.

I won't bore you with a plot summary or a whole lot of details about this film. It's a small story about a big Empire (the Mayan) and its effects on the local natives when it comes time to find some humans to sacrifice to their gods for the Global Warming that was hurting their tobacco production. Although you don't actually see any Native Americans smoking in this movie, you can tell by their bone structure and the looks on their faces that they were all heavy smokers. There's even one creepy shot of a grown man who must not have been bigger than a basketball.

There are a couple of things in the movie that really bothered me, other that this basketball-guy. The overbearing mother-in-law who is about as eager for grandkids as Cathy's mom in the comics was one. She and Cathy's mom should both be painted blue and have their hearts ripped out while they're forced to watch. Those mother-in-law scenes were hard to watch and should have either been toned down or left out completely. Also, later on when a young girl with smallpox (or some "sickness") prophesizes how the rest of the movie is going to go, that is just silly and pointless. That could have been done by some blind old broad in a dark hut with a monkey's head for a crystal ball and it might have been sellable. But everyone knows that Latin American pre-school orphan girls with smallpox can't tell the future. I mean, come on.

Other than these two items, I found Apocalypto to be fascinating. We watched it on DVD on a big-screen TV, and it's one of the few movies we've watched at home like this that I think would have been twice as good in a real theater. I think I might have even puked if I'd seen it on the big screen. I haven't had a movie make me puke since I drank that bottle of 20% California white wine and ate seven or eight mushrooms before going to see A Clockwork Orange. Every time the doorbell rings, I still get a little flashback on that one. "If he's got on a mask with a long nose, don't open it, honey."

But, as Bruce Bennett (some critic featured on Rotten Tomatoes) says, if anyone else had made this film, it would have been nominated for all sorts of Oscars. Seriously. If Werner Herzog had made this movie, they would be sacrificing grizzly bears to him as well as showering him with accolades. I think we need to try and understand why that didn't happen for Mel Gibson.

I realize that Hollywood doesn't like Christians, so making The Passion of the Christ didn't help his cause any, I suppose. That movie made a shitload of money, however. And you have to know that Hollywood likes money. Even so, it appears that Mel had to finance this project out of his own pocket to the tune of around $75M. It's amazing that he couldn't find someone in Hollywood to finance this for him after his last movie made such an outstanding profit. I mean, they financed Waterworld to the tune of $175M back in 1995 when a M really meant something.

If I said, "Israel is run by Jews," that wouldn't be very controversial, would it? How about if I said, "Hollywood is run by Jews." I mean, they are both incontrovertible facts. That's just the way it is. I'm sorry if that blanket statement offends anyone, but I suppose when Mel was pulled over by some of the same police force that recently put Paris Hilton in jail (for not wearing any underpants as she got out of a car, I think) and he apparently said some harsh things about the Tribal Folks, that didn't help him in Hollywood, either. However, with the somewhat recent attitudes in Europe and on college campii concerning the Jewish legitimacy, I would think that bitchslapping the Jews is akin to supporting a Palestinian State, and that alone should have given Mel some street cred with the cognoscenti. After all, isn't it the cognoscenti who write movie reviews and decide who gets Academy Awards, for the most part?

I guess this is all to say that I just don't get it. Mel is fucked up. Hollywood is fucked up. You'd think they'd make such a beautiful pair. But if you want to see a better car chase movie than Ronin, check out Apocalypto. These sumbitches can run. And they've got cool decals, too.