We went to see Mel Gibson’s new movie the other day. It was violent, but no more violent than some others. It was actually a pretty conventional run through the jungle kind of movie. It could have been set in Rome or Scotland or on Mars, without changing much. It was a pretty good movie, a lot of fantastic images, not terribly accurate historically. But the liberal movie reviewers are going nuts about it.
The review by Richard Schickel in the LA Times, that Harcamone tipped me to, is one atrocious example. This review, and others like it, are total bunk. If it was Spielberg or Brian De Palma instead of Mel Gibson, nobody would be spinning all this psychoanalytical bs about the sick, twisted psyche of the filmmaker. For all I know, Gibson’s psyche is sick and twisted, but this movie is not evidence of it, and that’s not the point anyway. Nobody spun all these judgmental theories about Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. This isn’t even about Gibson’s drunken tirade against the Jews. This is about The Passion. It is for making The Passion, that Mel Gibson is the unforgiven.