“apocalypto”
After hearing so much hype about this movie over many months, I finally managed to lay my hands on a copy of “Apocalypto” DVD. Watched it over the weekend and guess what? It wasn’t that great after all. So much about the ‘gore factor’ and stuffs. I was expecting something deeper and more meaningful, something like “Dances With Wolves”… (because for some reason, motion pictures featuring tribals always give me an impression that they’re always about stories that are emotionally engaging and spiritually thought provoking…).
But not this one. This one turned out to be another hackneyed ‘Mel Gibson formula’ - you know, peace loving hero had his friends/family robbed off his life by unscrupulous villains, then made to go through an episode of death defying torment and finally made a comeback as a badass one-man-army to eradicate all his nemesis. It’s nothing new really. We have watched stories like these retold a couple times before under his sleeve. “Braveheart”. “The Patriot”.
These 3 movies seem to share the same plot. Just a theme change, like my Sony Ericsson phone theme. 2007, Mayan tribals. 2009, it’ll be about some orang asli at Cameron Highlands… fighting bigfoot at Johor perhaps. The story could have used a more intelligent plot.
And there were also a lot of flaws. Let’s not even talk about the historical accuracies. It’s the scientific ones that bothered me. One of them was the sacrificial scene. In the flick, it was shown that the (male) victim was made to lay on his back on top of a granite stump-like structure, and the priest would then use a knife to disembowel the poor dude at the belly and take out his heart.
See the problem here already?
The heart is actually located at the (usually) left side of the chest. How the fuck did the priest remove a person’s heart through the belly? Well, the priest could, IF… he were to shove both his hands all the way from the belly up to the chest area… along with the crudely made big ass tribal knife… then with a precise surgical precision, severe the arteries and remove the heart out. Like Jack the Ripper multiplied by ten. But that didn’t seem to happen in the movie. The priest would just reach inside the belly, and he took out the heart as if he was picking up a Zippo lighter to burn his Cuban cigar. Oh puhleez… (but the beheading scenes were pretty cool though…)
And there’s also this part, where the hero’s pregnant wife was trapped inside a cavern-hole with his kid. At the finale, it rained heavily and it was shown that she’s about to drown until the very last minute before the hero managed to get to her in time to rescue her. I was thinking, couldn’t she just hold on to the jagged walls of the cavern and literally ‘float’ up to the surface as the water level rises? In reality, it’s very easy to do that and you don’t have to be a seasoned swimmer to figure that out. The whole thing doesn’t have to be so dramatic.
And so on.
The movie was just barely surpassing the ‘ok’ mark for me. The plot was very predictable and it wasn’t as edgy as I’ve expected it to be. (I would have ranked this movie lower than “The Departed”). A DVD should be sufficient, but don’t expect too much out of it.
Actually you would need a bone cutter to extract the heart out of the abdominal cavity coz you would have to saw through the rib cage. if it were that simple to access the heart, they wouldn’t need open heart surgery to repair that vital organ. And to think there were Oscar nominations for this crap. Luckily I read your review before I purchased the DVD. Ha ! saves me even the 6 bucks for DVD.
I would recommend “The Last of the Mohicans“, one of Michael Mann’s best movie ever. I know its old (year 1992) but it is a great movie. If you want to watch current movie, try Babel, it is suprisingly good (but this movie is either you love it or you hate it).
I’ve watched quite a number of latest movies these few weeks - “Babel”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Children of Men”, “The Holiday”, “Crank”, “Borat” (not really a movie), “Tenacious D”… to name a few.
I couldn’t find enough time to write review for all of them. Hell, I don’t even have time to blog my regular posts! (I’ve been ‘forced’ to initiate a project at work and have been real fracking busy nowadays)
["Babel" was just barely 'ok' for me. Nothing to shout about. But I agree about "The Last of Mohicans" - it was awesome. Tribal movies are usually awesome. Like "Dances with Wolves" and perhaps even "Hidalgo"]
Watched “Ghost Rider” last night, this is the only best action movie I have watched in 2007 so far. Damn cool. You should watch it.
any movie with excessive blood is gorey to me. But i feel Last mohican rock! And being the bimbo i am, i feel The Holiday is such a good movie too. However, i have no kind words for Ghost Rider though, i thought it sux..cos its so boring.
Just watched 300 today…..ffffffuckin awesome man the movie ~ tho u know most of it its animated but damn real …. nicely done
seremban engineer - Well, I haven’t watched it. But some of my friends said it was ‘ok’… (it was adapted from a comic book)
eve - I was yawning throughout “The Holiday”.
arsky - You lucky bastard! I’d dig anything from Frank Miller. That guy’s damn talented. You saw his Sin City comics? Freaking awesome (I’ve watched the movie too, not as good as the comics but, it was very good). Looking forward for “300″…
I think it is my astig. I like what I am reading but I find it very difficult
the black background and white characters
bengbeng - It’s my Wordpress plugin dude. It’s called “eye problems detector”. The primary function for this plugin is to detect whether a particular reader has an eyesight problem… if yes, it’ll trigger an appropriate subconscious warning to that person - just like what you’ve experienced for having ‘astigmatism’. Now you know you should get your eyes checked. My site is awesome.
where to find his comics in penang ? can’t wait for 300’s dvd to be out …. lol would love to watch it again
Go watch 300. I’m sure you would have a lot to complain about it.
bengbeng - see a little button on your monitor that looks like a half black and half white circle? That’s the contrast control. Turn it up, friend =D