★★★★ Apocalypto

[Gino: 4.0]

Gino says: 'First the negatives: (1) I felt a little bad putting a little bit of money in Mel Gibson's pocket by renting this. (2) There was sort of a feeling that this entire culture was depicted as brutal based on their admittedly brutal religious practices. I.e. I'm not sure we can extrapolate like that, and there was perhaps not enough "quiet time" in the film, exploring other aspects of the culture. (3) This film was non-stop peril and for example if Twoshoes had been watching her eyes would have been covered for 85% of the film. Highlight to read this spoiler: At one point the main character is being chased by 4 warriors after running for a day and a half, while his wife and 3 year old son are in a pit which is filling with water. He has an arrow in his chest and his wife gives BIRTH to another child at the same time. I am not kidding.

That all said, it was a nice piece of work: The sustained action was impressive. The acting good. The film looked great. The writing tight. The subtitles were a great idea in this case, because, perhaps counter-intuitively they added to the realism. And all technical aspects of the film were great.'