Apocalypto

You have to hand it to those Mayans: they were all heart. As cinema bad guys go, the Mayan hunting party leader will go down as a classic with his jawbone-clad arms and Yul Brynner stare.

There are shades of King Solomon's mines in this one; shades too of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trying to outrun the posse. At every turn I was expecting the runaway hero to ask: "Who are those guys?" They just keep on coming and he just keeps on running.

It's gut-wringing, breathless stuff from first to last as you might expect with a water birth, tarantulas, a few poisoned darts, snake bites and a jaguar that makes two of anything driven by John Prescott.

The animals fare almost as badly as the humans. I didn't stay for the credits but I would need to be convinced if there was the usual assurance that no "creatures were harmed in the making of this film."

Among the body-count was a tapir, a jaguar, at least one monkey and a sickly-looking toad that wasn't half as sickly as the chap who was "toaded". Still the props and computer imagery is so lifelike these days. I suppose they'll be claiming that the decapitated bodies were really dummies. I don't think so.

Imagine Rambo meets The Fugitive in the hot house at Kew; give them some bows and arrows and a few neat flinty clubs, then endow your hero with all the curative wonders of the rainforest. Gash your leg? Just stitch it up with the jaws of a soldier ant. Arrow wound? Bung in a bit of bark. Imminent execution in front of thousands? Pray for a solar eclipse. You could have got good odds on that at William Hill.

I tell you what: basketball games will never be the same again for me after this film. Gill was a withering wreck at the end, save for this one plaintive request: "Can we go see Beatrix Potter next week?"