Apocalypto

Didja ever notice that most of Mel Gibson's movies have the same premise: Nice moral guy is living a peaceful life with his family until some bad guy messes with/kills his family, then it's payback time for Mad Mel. We saw it in the original Mad Max, it's the underlying theme in the Lethal Weapon series, it's the engine that drives Braveheart and we got it again in The Patriot. There are other Gibson flics involving a mob debt and a kidnapped son that also follow the pattern. Mel's remake of Macbeth fits too.
I watched Apocalypto on DVD this afternoon and guess what? Same theme, transposed to the pre-Columbian jungles of Latin America. This time the good guy is a noble savage living with his tribe in the jungle and the bad guys are the Mayas who come raiding for slaves and victims for their ritual sacrifices.
I had it figured out in the first 10 minutes, even though I was hoping I was wrong just for the sake of novelty. It's all in native dialect - not an English word in the whole script - but it's not that hard to follow. At 2 hours 18 minutes, the movie is a bit long and it's insanely violent and gory - beating hearts being hacked out of sacrificial victims and more beheadings than an evening of Al Jazeera.
That said, it's worth a look. After all, how many movies have you seen about the Mayas?