He hinted at it with Jesus? prolonged, agonising death in ?The Passion of the Christ?. With an immeasurable body count and mutilation factor in ?Apocalypto,? it?s confirmed: Mel Gibson is master of the epic snuff film.

Director Gibson applies the same breathtaking production values and attention to detail as he did in ?Braveheart? and ?The Passion.? But he amplifies the violence beyond the brutal of ?Braveheart? and the excruciating of ?The Passion? to something approaching abhorrent at the height of the carnage in ?Apocalypto?.

Was pre-Columbian Mayan society a savage place? Sure, at times.

Does Gibson need to repeatedly show us lopped-off heads bouncing like coconuts down the towering stairs of a pyramid to prove it? Not so much.

The blood and gore become so extreme that they provoke titters of ridicule, undermining a simple, stirring story of family devotion as a man races from vile captors to return home and rescue his pregnant wife and their son.

Gibson also strains credulity with his main character?s Christlike ability to survive what look to be fatal, or at least incapacitating, piercings by arrows. The suffering the character goes through is not unlike the scourging of Christ.

Then again, Gibson?s Martin Riggs survived about a thousand-and-one bullets at the end of ?Lethal Weapon 2? and lived to fight again in two more sequels.

Given the furore over ?The Passion?, whose critics worried that it might stoke anti-Semitism, and Gibson?s drunken driving arrest and anti-Semitic ramblings last summer, it?s fortuitous for him that his next film was something about as far removed from all that as possible. At least no one can call Gibson a Jew hater for ?Apocalypto?.

In the vein of the dead languages featured in ?The Passion?, Gibson, who co-wrote the ?Apocalypto? screenplay with Farhad Safinia, has his cast of unknowns talking in Yucatec Maya, spoken today only in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Also like ?The Passion?, ?Apocalypto? is a visual story ? long stretches told through pictures, sound effects and music, without need of dialogue. The language is simple and direct, and if you miss a subtitle or two, you won?t suffer a moment?s confusion as to what?s happening.

If harsh jungle existence can be idyllic, that?s what life is for the small village Gibson introduces us to in the movie?s marvellous opening act, a group of hunter-gatherers living on the fringes of the great Mayan civilisation 500 years ago.

Great warmth, fraternity, compassion and sly humour underlie this little society, where Gibson?s hero Jaguar Paw (played with fiery fortitude by American Indian Rudy Youngblood) lives surrounded by friends and family.

They?re like children of paradise, taking what they need from their surroundings and leaving the rest, dwelling in harmony with nature. We see wonderful glimpses of Jaguar Paw?s tenderness toward his pregnant wife (Dalia Hernandez) and their young son, as well as moments of the community?s lust for life and laughter, most notably centred on the character of the town?s well-meaning oaf Blunted (Jonathan Brewer).

Then invaders from the big city show up, including the fierce warrior leader Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo) and the sadistic Snake Ink (Rodolfo Palacios), who, with their tattoos, facial ornaments and other accoutrements, look like refugees from Gibson?s ?The Road Warrior?.

Many of Jaguar Paw?s kin are slain, and he and others are captured and led on a forced march, but not before he manages to stash his wife and son away in a safe but temporary hiding place.

Until now, Gibson has shown enough restraint to keep the story engrossing and believable. When captives and conquerors arrive at the Mayan metropolis, the gloves come off, along with a lot of heads.

The panorama and bustle of the city are remarkably visceral, but the only sense Gibson provides of the heart of Mayan culture is that of a society of bloodthirsty lunatics.

The excess of repugnant violence continues during a frequently thrilling jungle chase as Zero Wolf and his men pursue Jaguar Paw. If you?ve ever wanted to see a jaguar bite off a man?s face, this is your movie.

Shot in lush landscapes of Central America, ?Apocalypto? shows us a fresh, vital, often beautiful and often terrifying world. And Gibson introduces us to a fearless set of performers who inhabit the loincloth lifestyle with ease and grace.

It?s hard to know what to make of some closing images of stiff, pasty Europeans coming ashore, a crucifix prominently displayed. The way Gibson presents it, their arrival in the New World looks mildly comical, though when the chuckles subside, it?s pretty ominous stuff given the ravaging of native cultures we know is to come in the subsequent centuries.

On reflection, the closing images hark back uneasily to an epigram from historian Will Durant that opens the film: ?A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.?

What?s Gibson saying? That the Mayans already are rotting on the vine, so it?s just as well that self-righteous Europeans move in and start marking off their building lots?

Like the more laughable violence of ?Apocalypto,? the European arrival probably is best shrugged off and forgotten as just another weird apparition in a filmmaker?s grand but cruel and twisted vision.

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