My husband is a closet action movie freak. When I go out of town or work through the weekend, he fills up on cinematic crap that he knows he'll never get to watch when I'm in the house. I'm not saying my taste in movies is in any way academic--it's not. However, there are certain things I just cannot sit through either for intellectual reasons or because they make me afraid of the dark.
When I got home from frying myself on an AstroTurf field yesterday, my husband was deeply engrossed in Apocalypto. There was an immediate flash of recognition in my brain: I didn't watch this because it's gross. Almost on cue, my husband said, "Those Mayans were fucking psycho. That's a society that was no great loss. Brutal." I assumed the movie had neglected to delve into the artistic and engineering related accomplishments of the Mayan culture. Of course. Mel Gibson had been too busy focusing on disembowelments of live people,blood-spurting head wounds, and mass executions. Eeewwww.I thought Braveheart had a good story line but was one of the most graphically violent movies I had ever seen. Unfortunately, I watched it the same week I watched Rob Roy, so I had far exceeded my ability to tolerate violent visuals.
I will say this: Apocalypto was beautifully and lovingly filmed. It's like watching a tropical painting come to life. The sound editing is phenomenal. The rest of it just seems like a two-hour attempt to out-gross-out the previous scene. Couldn't the story have been told just a little less sadistically?
Before this movie, I thought Smurfs were the only blue people running around in the forest. Now I know better. Evil Smurfs. Sadistic, psychotic, Yucatec-grunting Smurfs. Mel Gibson's Smurfs...
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