Mel's Latest Passion

It's the Mayans, of all things! That's what I thought, anyway, going into "Apocalypto," Gibson's much-anticipated (by me, Diane Sawyer, and ABC/Disney) follow-up to The Passion. Turns out, Mel's latest passion is the same as his old passion: the unflinching depiction of extreme scenes of torture and death, for indeterminate entertainment value.

My high hopes for Apocalypto stemmed from the fine job he did bringing to vivid life, in every flesh-ripping detail, the final hours of Jesus that every Catholic altar boy has imprinted on his brain from his first "Stations of the Cross" duty. My hopes came tumbling down faster than the severed heads of those unfortunate human sacrifices the Mayan high priests tossed off those authentically steep steps of their temple an hour into this gorefest. (Why did the Mayans sacrifice young and healthy male captives, anyway? Who built their temples and produced their food? No wonder their agriculture-based civilization died out. It was either that or gingivitis, judging from the close-ups).

Truth is, Gibson does no favors to the almost-forgotten, thousand-year civilization of the Maya, who in their heyday had a highly-developed society that excelled in art, architecture, mathematics, and had a complex writing system. Judging from their behavior in this movie, you wonder how this bloodthirsty rabble stopped their human sacrifice rituals long enough to build, write, or create anything. They should have just stayed in the jungle, Gibson seems to be saying, like the 'noble savages' who are the heroes of the movie, in spite of his depiction of them as a bunch of crude practical jokesters. Frankly, I wouldn't want to spend any time in either side's company, let alone 139 minutes.

Of course, one of the reasons The Passion worked and this film doesn't is that Mel had better writers the first time. (Four guys -- non-Guild members -- as I recall). Here, left to his own limited screenwriting abilities, Gibson relies on every hackneyed, overwrought, and ridiculously-improbable plot device to tell the story of one young father's struggle to overcome unspeakable torture and certain death to rescue his ... oh, why bother!