Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" is set in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in vaguely pre-Columbian times, in that seemingly endless epoch when the mighty Mayan city-states ruled supreme and took their pleasures from the land and surrounding peoples with no thought to consequence or brotherhood. They were rulers; everyone else was naked prey.

Our hero is no Maya, however. He is one Jaguar Paw (brilliant Rudy Youngblood), of an indigenous forest people. In a Potemkin village of surpassing beauty, these happy children of innocence cavort like so many Rima the Bird Girls, chattering in Maya, living in perfect monogamy in warm little family units under the watchful eye of the benevolent patriarch Flint Sky.

But this is all about to end. One morning the Mayas arrive in force. The results are not pretty. With the survivors secured by thong and neck brace, the surviving children left to die, the Mayas herd their captives off for disposal.

This begins the film's center passage, a kind of tour of the hell that is the Mayan city-state. It appears to be late in the day for Mayan rule, as slash-and-burn agriculture has finally used up the land. Plague has struck. The priest-kings of the Maya have turned to human sacrifice for salvation.

You can see where this is going, but that doesn't really prevent you from enjoying it immensely. Jaguar Paw, as it turns out, is the messenger of the gods, he who is specified in prophecy as harbinger of the end of days, according to the movie's official haunted-little-girl truth-speaker. Thus, by various largely unbelievable contrivances, he manages to escape, which sets up the film's last, best hour.

Gibson may not be much of a deep thinker, but he's a heck of a storyteller. "Apocalypto" turns out to be not a case of Montezuma's revenge but of Gibson's: It's something entirely unexpected, a sinewy, taut poem of action.

-- Stephen Hunter (Dec. 8, 2006)

Contains extreme violence and gore and disturbing images.