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12/05/2006 Entry: "Mr Smith Goes To Washington"
Remember that Simpsons where Homer convinces Mel Gibson to turn Mr Smith Goes To Washington into an over-the-top snuff film? This isn't too different.
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.
