Apocalypto

Apocalypto demonstrates two things: that Mel Gibson is a hell of a filmmaker and that his imaginative world borders on the Neanderthal.

Apocalypto is a strange but largely entertaining mix of action, bloodletting, chin-rubbing and arthouse trimmings.

It's escapism - the world would be a lot safer if good and evil were so clearly defined - and it's something that Mel Gibson proves (once again) that he does very, very well in Apocalypto.

It's Gibson's taste for carnage that defeats him in the end. The brutality is relentless, and the many ways in which blood is spilt so ingenious, that it's numbing. Once the adrenaline rush subsides, there's nothing left.

A film for the passionate, brave of heart and strong of stomach.

It makes all of the violence and pain portrayed onscreen feel extra exploitative of indigenous people, history, and fact

Gibson makes people nervous in part because he takes the obscene fascination with violence ... to such absurd heights that the entire phenomenon threatens to become visible and called into question.

Gibson continues to tackle historically-tinged, grand-scale adventures unlike anything before them.