Set in the period before Spanish contact on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, I was really looking forward to this movie about the Mayan empire.
What we got was not really a historical movie about the Mayans, but a movie about one person in the declining years of the empire.
The movie has as a backdrop the brutality and barbaric practices of the Mayans but really doesn't show any of the accomplishments of this very advanced civilization. It makes me wonder if Mel Gibson was more concerned about showing the need for a Christian influence on their culture than he was in showing the civilization as it actually was.
I really liked that the movie used the Mayan language and some of the scenes in the city were beautiful.
I just wish that if you were going to use spend all that money to present a civilization that we could have been presented with a more balanced portrayal of it. The movie was action packed and very exciting. It is also beautifully filmed.
The movie ends with the good guys getting off the boats (the Conquistadors), who will soon put an end to this barbaric civilization (the only problem is that they were probably just as barbaric as the Mayans).
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