Ok, the movie, boiled down to the bone is basically a chase film. Guy gets captured, guy escapes. However, that isn't to say it wasn't a good watch. On the contrary, it was very entertaining-- in a guy way. Lotsa indigenous boobs, hearts being ripped out of chests, pungi stakes poking through limbs, animals biting faces off-kind of thing. Good stuff.
The film critics who claim this is Mel's best film must have been licking one of those toads the protagonist uses to poison his enemies with, because there is no way it's better than Braveheart. Yeah, it beats We Were Soldiers and that one where he can hear women's thoughts, but being drawn & quartered > human sacrifice, any day of the week.
The movie is all subtitles, but that's not really an issue since you could ignore the "dialogue" and figure out what's going on from the action. Like I said, it's very straight forward. I had hoped for a little more pain being dispensed out to the ****** Mayan who kills Bunga-bunga's dad, but he gets dispatched fairly quick.
One thing that struck me was if Gibson's movie was correct or historically accurate (which apparently it's not) then it's no wonder Mayan civilization just disappeared off the face of the earth. As Bunga-bunga runs away from Mayan-ville and his pursuers, he slips into what, for all the world, looks like an outtake from The Killing Fields. There's this huge pit with all the bodies the injuns have been killing, which happens to be co-located next to town. Hmmm, cholera and typhoid, anyone? Also, no one seems to be doing anything constructive like farming or crafting. There's just a bunch of white guys hauling around blocks of stone. Pffft! yeah, like that's gonna happen...
One last observation: I have decided that out of all the cats in the world I like jaguars best. Well, maybe snow leopards are still cooler, but that jet black coat sure looks nifty.
Oh. By the way, the guy lives and saves his family just as the conquistadors arrive to wipe out the injuns with small pox. End of movie, credits start to roll.
Totem