February 10, 2010
At first, I did not even plan to watch this movie because of the criticism about the extreme violence. However, because of good reviews from the unlikeliest of people I decided to just give it a go.
This movie is like two separate movies. The first half follows a group of tribesmen who were abducted from their idyllic forest homes by fierce marauders, and their harrowing ordeal through the jungle into "civilization". It is then revealed that the women were to be sold as slaves, while the men were supposed to be human sacrifices. However the main character Jungle Paw somehow escapes his beheading when a solar eclipse occurs precisely as his head was on the chopping block.
Then the second half follows Jungle Paw as he amazingly and "super-human"-ly escapes from his captors. From the open arena where he was the target for arrows and spears, through the corn plants, through the field of headless corpses, down the waterfall, through the quicksand, and so on, as he is relentlessly pursued by Zero Wolf and his men. This is a very action-packed and very exciting (albeit unbelievable) series of events.
I am not going to treat this as an accurate depiction of the declining Mayan civilization, but using this era as the background for this story is very appropriate. But despite the foreign language, the action and cinematography speaks for itself. The fact that are all possibly first time actors makes the cast very impressive. In the Oscars, it was only nominated in Make-up and the sound categories. It also deserves nominations in Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume and Visual Effects, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment