Before the arrival of the Europeans to the New World, the Mayan culture was on its decline. At that time, the government put much effort in sacrificing human lives and hoped for a change with the mercy of heaven. One day, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood)'s village was attacked by people from the city, who wanted to exchange the captured villagers for money. The villagers would then be killed and sacrificed for the gods. Jaguar Paw put his wife and son in a hole before he was captured. He escaped the sacrifice, but was chased after because he killed one of the capturers…

The film is one of the most violent films I have ever seen. There were not a lot of fights, but the sacrifices were so disturbing. However, I do not think that the Mayan were any more terrible than people in the modern world. Nowadays, people just do their torture in a different way. The film uses what happened in the past in the Mayan world to reflect what modern people do to hurt each other, both physically and mentally.

Once again, Mel Gibson makes a foreign language film instead of having the film in his mother tongue English (see The Passion of the Christ). The film is in Mayan and viewers need to read the subtitles all the way. This is not too much an inconvenience. Actually, that makes the film more special and real, too.

There is so much to think about after watching the film. I like it despite the bad feelings from watching the sacrifices.