Heads will roll

REVIEWED - APOCALYPTO:Take away the unusual setting and lush production values, and Apocalypto is just another sadism-saturated Hollywood action movie, writes Michael Dwyer

EXPERIENCE has taught us to expect the unexpected when Mel Gibson sits in the director's chair. He takes on projects that invariably are regarded as high-risk ventures and then defies doubters when they sweep up awards (the Oscar-winning Braveheart) and clean up at the box-office (The Passion of the Christ).

The one constant is that the male protagonists - and the viewer - will be subjected to cruel, sadistic violence. Given that Braveheart ended with William Wallace drawn and quartered and that The Passion of Christ concluded in crucifixion and death, the prospects appear unpromising for Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), the fearless, resourceful young hero who has to run for his life in Apocalypto.

Having dared to make his Passion film in Latin and Aramaic, Gibson has the cast speaking a Mayan dialect in Apocalypto, which is set in another primitive world, during the decline of the Mayas in the 16th century. Audiences deterred by subtitles will be relieved that the movie is not dialogue-heavy and the emphasis is firmly on gory, bloodthirsty action.

It opens on a quote from historian Will Durant: "A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it destroys itself from within." This is the first cue that the idyllic existence of Jaguar Paw's tribe will be short-lived. Theirs is a peaceful tribe whose men are dogged in hunting the animals that provide them with food, and they live in a close community of large families. Jaguar Paw is the eldest of 10 and his wife is about to have their second child.

Marauding warriors invade their village, levelling it to the ground and decimating the population. Some of the men, among them Jaguar Paw, are taken captive, tied together by their necks to a wooden pole - their surrogate for the cross carried by Jesus. Continuing those allusions, they are doomed for ritual human sacrifice before a baying mob.

The movie's stripped-down narrative is surprisingly conventional and familiar from countless genre predecessors, albeit enhanced with the striking production values so skilfully applied under Gibson's accomplished core team of cinematographer Dean Semler, production designer Tom Sanders and film editor John Wright.

Apocalypto is no history lesson, although Gibson draws parallels between its events and the war in Iraq. He seems less interested in an anthropological exploration of the era than in employing it as an exotic backdrop for the elemental action sequences he orchestrates with such relish, particularly in the vigorous extended chase over the last hour of the movie.

The violence is graphic and relentless, and steeped in casual brutality. Heads roll, literally, and hearts are plucked from living bodies. However, whereas The Passion of Christ featured a single victim with whom the audience could empathise throughout a shocking ordeal of suffering, Apocalypto has a distinctly distancing effect as to what registers as a succession of extras get decapitated or disembowelled.