If "Apocalypto" were a meal, it would be a very red, very rare, incredibly tough steak. No garnishings. This isn't something for the faint of digestion, not to mention the heart; it pummels and kicks the senses awake to thrust them not into higher gear necessarily but another dimension altogether. "Apocalypto" defies genre and description and, like that steak, recovery from the experience can take a long, long time. Director Mel Gibson says in the production notes that he wanted to appeal to the audiences' instincts instead of their brains, but after half an hour you begin to wonder if your instincts are up to the challenge.
There's a theory that the game of soccer started in Mexico some 3,000 years ago; back then there was no field and the players would engage in a kind of endless marathon involving a ball and keep running for days until death or victory, whichever came first. "Apocalypto" makes you think this was indeed the case; almost from beginning to end the movie is about running, killing and dying in Mexico. There are no intervals or let-ups and there's so much panting/screaming/blood-letting you begin to fear for your own health. Surely the human retina (or vicariously, the lungs) was never meant to take so much carnage and hyperventilation, at least not for entertainment purposes.
Interestingly, the movie was completed on the heels of Gibson's hugely publicized remark about Jews being the cause for "all the wars in the world." He later stated in an apologetic press conference that he really didn't know what he "could have been thinking" — well, the exact same thing can be said for "Apocalypto." Always a prominent if prickly presence in the Hollywood community, perhaps Gibson was thinking about redemption, vindication, an outlet for some serious sado-masochistic issues or all of the above and more — this movie is that bizarre. Brilliantly, shockingly bizarre with the kind of mesmerizing appeal mere horror-story gore could never achieve.