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

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 5, 2023

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

| Dec 8, 2021

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.

| Feb 14, 2021

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

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 15, 2020

Apocalypto is the very best thing Gibson has done as a director, and should not be missed because of a shared repugnance for his off-screen worldview.

| May 20, 2020

If Mel Gibson is a mad genius, then Apocalypto may be his most insane work yet.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 5, 2019

There is something different in Gibson's application of violence. The objections seem to lie not just in Gibson's realistic portrayal of cruelty but in the judgment he brings to it.

| Oct 16, 2018

A quite exciting spectacle based on a racist version of indigenous history, one in which the genocidal conquistadors are the New World's liberators.

| Jul 18, 2014

Apocalypto isn't simply an effective movie, but an immensely powerful one: a benchmark and a foresight seemingly all rolled into one.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 22, 2013

| Original Score: B- | Feb 14, 2012

Ignore Apocalypto's symbolic hubbub and instead view it for Gibson's perverse sense of entertainment. His passionate spectacle of human destruction and doom packs a terrific visceral punch.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 6, 2010

Nothing if not visceral

| Aug 28, 2009

All in all Apocalypto is probably Gibson's best film to date, because it's almost free of any of Hollywood's tainting.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 29, 2009

Mel Gibson follows up "The Passion of the Christ," his entrée into directing schlock B-move horror films with high production values, with an even more gory study into bodily torture and death.

| Original Score: C | Apr 24, 2009

The middle of the film, though, finds Gibson at his sadistic best, depicting monumental savagery with a surreal cinematic glee that puts the Apocalypse in Apocalypto.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 23, 2009

What this thing turns out to be is a skimpy action flick.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 23, 2007

If you can get past Mr. Gibson's public persona, Apocalypto is a good, solid action movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2007

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

| Jun 29, 2007

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

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2007

How can we be inspired by the spirit of Jaguar Paw when the film's telling us that people stink and the great cultures of the Americas were the architects of their own demise?

Full Review | Original Score: 70/100 | May 20, 2007