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Apocalypto
Buena Vista Pictures


7.2

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 296 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sequences of graphic violence and disturbing images

Starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez, Ramirez Amilcar, Israel Contreras, and Israel Rios

A heart stopping mythic action-adventure set against the turbulent end times of the once great Mayan civilization. (Touchstone)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Adventure \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Mel Gibson Farhad Safinia
DIRECTED BY:	Mel Gibson
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 22, 2007 Theatrical: December 8, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	136 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA
LANGUAGE(S):	Maya (with English subtitles)

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Variety Todd McCarthy

Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that Apocalypto is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power.

100

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

For those of us who prefer to judge Gibson solely in terms of his art, the movie is a virtuosic piece of action cinema -- particularly in its second half...And while there has been no shortage of recent films that decry the horrors of war and man's inhumanity to his fellow man, I know of none other quite this sickeningly powerful.

100

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The production design is superb, and the actors deliver their dialogue in subtitled Yucatecan Maya, but despite all the anthropological drag, this is really just a crackerjack Saturday-afternoon serial.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

For all its excesses, it's an absorbing, disturbing, savagely beautiful "trip" movie, and an extraordinary -- perhaps even outrageous -- personal vision of the one A-list filmmaker who truly deserves the adjective "maverick."

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Gibson may not be much of a deep thinker, but he's a heck of a storyteller. Apocalypto turns out to be not a case of Montezuma's revenge but of Gibson's: It's something entirely unexpected, a sinewy, taut poem of action.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Barbarously beautiful and gut-wrenchingly (literally) violent, it's a mesmerizing vision of the past refracted through the dark obsessions of the present.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Awe-inspiring and harrowing, vile and beautiful, as wild and mesmerizing as the Mexican jungle in which it is filmed and one of the most relentlessly thrilling films of the year.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The heart of the matter - and the viscera - is the action, and one man's determination to survive. Apocalypto is primal.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The best thing I can say about Apocalypto is that, despite belonging to an overpopulated genre, it's unlike any other movie to reach theaters this year and, because it is as visual an experience as it is visceral, it is best seen on a large screen.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

The whole film is too reliant on action-movie cuts and zooms, plus James Horner's insistent score, but it's beautifully rendered and convincingly exciting.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

By the end I felt sure it was the most obsessively, graphically violent film I'd ever seen, but equally sure that Apocalypto is a visionary work with its own wild integrity. And absolutely, positively convinced that seeing it once is enough for one lifetime.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The guy knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.

Newsweek David Ansen

The film is mostly successful in transporting the viewer to another age: the costumes, the body markings, the fierce Mayan masks, all feel right. And keeping the dialogue in subtitles was a smart move. Even better are the faces, which never fail to fascinate. But for all the anthropological research that went into the movie, what is Apocalypto trying to say?

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Apocalypto turns into the best "Rambo" movie ever made. The worrisome part is that Gibson doesn't think he's making a boneheaded action picture. For him, torture and vengeance are the way of the world. This is Gibsonian metaphysics.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

That is the thing about Gibson, fool that he is in other ways: he has learned how to tell a tale, and to raise a pulse in the telling. You have to admire that basic gift, uncommon as it is in Hollywood these days.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Apocalypto is a dazzling achievement. Not only does it showcase a civilization little seen on the silver screen, the film (which opens with a quote from Will Duant) also advances larger questions about the natural and unnatural life cycles of civilizations.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

There's so much dark material jammed into this complicated, conflicted, challenging, and charismatic man's (Gibson) own noggin that sometimes he knows not, I think, what he's done. Here, behold, Mel Gibson has made the weirdest, most violent movie of the year.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's possible for a despicable heart and mind to make great art. And if Gibson hasn't quite done that with Apocalypto, he's nevertheless made an impressive and engrossing film. If you choose out of hand to miss it, which is your right, you'll be missing something.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Say what you will about Gibson, but he's a genuine filmmaker, and Apocalypto gallops along the thin line between the deluded and the inspired with such conviction that you're yanked into its wake.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Say what you want about Mel Gibson, but that sadomasochistic anti-Semite knows how to shoot a movie.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Apocalypto exists solely as an action-adventure and a deft cinematic demonstration of man's capacity for cruelty. This is the true passion of Mel.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

A lotta woe to sit through, with not much to think about and only one matter to address. After the two hours-plus have sped by with brutal alacrity, all that's left is for the survivors of the bloodbath to hose down and suss out a "new beginning." I'm still searching for mine, but you might have better luck.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Neither Mr. Gibson’s fans nor his detractors are likely to accuse him of excessive subtlety, and the effectiveness of Apocalypto is inseparable from its crudity. But the blunt characterizations and the emphatic emotional cues are also evidence of the director’s skill.

Time Richard Schickel

Gibson is a primitive all right, but so were Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, and somehow we survived their idiocies.

Empire Staff (Not credited)

Dextrous with the action-adventure elements but clumsy in its handling of the central message, Apocalypto is a strange but largely entertaining mix of action, bloodletting, chin-rubbing and arthouse trimmings.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It's difficult to imagine the target audience for this film. Gangbangers, perhaps?

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Numerous good things can be said about Apocalypto, the director's foray into the decaying Mayan civilization of the early 1500s, but every last one of them is overshadowed by Gibson's well-established penchant for depictions of stupendous amounts of violence.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

With "Braveheart," "Passion" and now Apocalypto, Gibson clearly has established his priorities as a director. History is gore, plus a few hearthside family interludes. The trick is instilling the audience with enough rageful bloodlust to make the story work.

Slate Dana Stevens

I could go on about the beautifully detailed production design, the fresh performances from unknown and often nonprofessional actors, blabbety blah. But praising the movie's craftsmanship seems less urgent than communicating the overwhelming experience of watching it: the clammy, claustrophobic dread of being trapped in a torture chamber.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Gibson sure knows how to shoot a sequence, but he also doesn't know when to stop with the blood, gore and maiming.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Yet Apocalypto has to be respected for the sheer audacity of it, for the commitment and ambition behind it, and for its presentation of a complete other world. It is the furthest thing from a cynical or casual piece of work. It's crazy, and it moves.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

But even those who succumb to his primitive, survivalist vision may resent the way he presents every kind of atrocity at least twice without illuminating any of the exotic details once.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

A relentlessly gruesome, visually impressive and ultimately not very interesting movie with some pretensions to seriousness.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Not just a walk in the park with Mel and the guys (in this case a large cast of mainly Mexican Indians speaking present- day Yucatec), this lavishly punishing picture is the third panel in Gibson's "Ordeal" triptych. The Martyrdom of the Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ have nothing on The Misadventures of the Jaguar Paw.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The movie is so impressionistic, it obfuscates any sense of history. We expect at least a hint at the causes of the Mayan Empire's demise, but instead we get Mesoamerican Rambo.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's "Braveheart" without historical significance and "Passion" without spirituality, though it dabbles in both, and it represents as brazen an act of career suicide as I can recall from a star director. If he were a first-timer, he'd never work again.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 296 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

David gave it a10:
I loved this movie!!! Very graphic in certain areas, but one of the few films I could watch over and over.

jazzman gave it a10:
Really a great movie. If you haven't seen it check it out. in my top 10 movies all time.

Steve R gave it an8:
My opinion is that this was a Great movie!! The scenery the actors, and the story line exceeded my expectations! I haven't bought a DVD for some time but I will definitely buy this one. Action packed and very dramatic. I could visualize myself being there in this time of change for the Mexica Indians.

sreepriya bs gave it a10:
Excellent movie!! was able to watch the movie on tv n i was really moved by the movie... loved the emotions through the movie and a gr8 job by mel gibson!

James M. gave it a10:
A movie about pre colonial Mexico with a message for today? Exciting and with a message that takes a little thought to see clearly. Excellent.

Adam S. gave it a10:
Really drawn into it the whole time. Loved it. A+

Desmond M gave it a10:
You can always tell if a movie's going to be good or bad by reading the user comments in metacritic. After reading apocalypto's comments I knew I had to watch it. All the people who gave it bad ratings were obviously either complete idiots, or the sort of feeble, weak people who scream at the sight of mice. Why would you watch a movie rated R for violence and disturbing images if you don't like the sight of blood!? The main reason you can tell that the people who thought badly of 'apocalypto' are idiots is by the fact that the same people who say that they went into the movie expecting it to be about the downfall of the mayans and were surprised that it was not, go on to state that the plot is predictable... Hmm... let's think... How can the storyline be surprising and unexpected, and yet the plot is predictable??? Aren't the storyline and the plot pretty much the same thing!? And I don't get how 'Andrew' can say that the movie was historically inaccurate, even after 'Richard. T' wrote what looked like a novel about the many aspects of the film that related to history and were plausible. Also, I don't think many of us would have left the theatre with a mortal fear of mayans, scared that at any second they're going to come and destroy our houses, tie us up and take us away... In case everyone who said that the mayans were portrayed incorrectly as a violent people don't realise, not only were the people who wrecked the village and stole all the adults (the 'bad guys') mayan, but the good guys were mayans as well. You all choose to look at it from the point of view that everyone will have the wrong idea about the mayans now, even though 'jaguar paw' (who was mayan as well, duh!) was shown as such a kind and loving man who did so much for his wife, son, and unborn child, and only killed or harmed his enemies in self defence... As I mentioned before, immediately after reading the comments on metacritic, and seeing how stupid the people who were cynical of this movie were, I went and watched the movie, for which I am very grateful. It was actually one of the best movies I've ever seen, even though I haven't really liked Mel Gibson in the past. This was one of those movies that I just had to have on DVD. It was a great movie, and I don't even need to criticize the people who didn't like it any more, because their dim-wittedness speaks for itself. Awesome acting. Awesome storyline. Awesome movie!!!

Apocalypto Buena Vista Pictures

Apocalypto
Buena Vista Pictures