Anthony LaneAnthony Lane on Gibson's latest:

“Apocalypto” is a pathological work of art. It is neither gratuitous nor casual; Gibson is not trying out an idea or testing a visual manner, and the digital cameras used throughout by the director of photography, Dean Semler, yield both a lustre and a pantherish mobility that reach to the guts of the story. That is the thing about Gibson, fool that he is in other ways: he has learned how to tell a tale, and to raise a pulse in the telling. You have to admire that basic gift, uncommon as it is in Hollywood these days, though equally you have to ask what obsessions goad it on. Contrary to what his detractors say, I don’t believe Gibson is roused by violence in itself. What lures him, in his dark remoldings of Catholic iconography, is breakage and restoration—the deeper and more foul the wounds, the more pressing the need to see them healed. Hence the multiple endings of “Apocalypto,” at once overpowering and risible, and hence the blessing that one of the murderous hunters bestows on a friend whose life, cut short by a snakebite to the neck, is quickly draining away: “Travel well.