As easy as Mel Gibson has made it to bash him, he’s a thunderously old-school kind of filmmaker. Even though he’s taken to bankrolling his own subtitled, dead-language epics, the brawny former action star may only seem to be rewriting the Hollywood rule book.

The movies Mr. Gibson has directed — including the Oscar-winning “Braveheart”(1995),the Revolutionary War drama “The Patriot” (2000), and the zeitgeist-frying “The Passion of the Christ” (2004) — are significantly lacking in elegance and sophistication, but, hey, Mr. Lethal Weapon never claimed he was Akira Kurosawa. He just wants to whip audiences into a lusty froth with blood-soaked sprawls of human sacrifice, impossible struggle, and burning vengeance.

“Apocalypto,” which opens today, is all that and more: The sacrifices aren’t metaphors, they’re the sensational centerpiece of the film. After a peaceful Mayan jungle village of hunters and their brood is ravaged by a ruthless warrior tribe, the strongest of its men are served up to appease the gods, hearts yanked from their chests still beating atop a pyramid-shaped temple. Wild-eyed priests gibber. Heads roll down thousands of steps toward the ecstatic masses. Drums beat.

If Mr. Gibson had called his movie “Mondo Apocalypto” he wouldn’t be off the mark. While he once held some actorly cachet in the early stretch of his career (circa “The Year of Living Dangerously”), Mr. Gibson’s instincts as an entertainer are pure grindhouse. There’s a part of him that will always be the “Road Warrior,” and his thirst for exploitation thrills is what gives this lush nightmare its visceral kick.

The movie itself isn’t much more than a two-hour chase scene. It’s less concerned with the end of Mayan civilization, or the mythic facets of its shamanistic culture, than Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain,” which evoked a similar time and setting for new-agey cosmological flourish. Instead, it’s like a “National Geographic” version of “24.”

A young hunter named Jaguar Paw is having a very bad day. His father, the tribal leader, was murdered before his eyes; survivors of the rape and pillage have been yoked into bondage, to be sold as slaves — or worse; and he’s just stashed his pregnant wife and toddler son in a secluded pit while he figures out what’s next. As played by Rudy Youngblood (chief among a cast of unknowns), Jaguar Paw is an athletic dervish whose sheer mercurial grace and pulsing physicality transform every scene he’s in — which is all of them. Like the rest of the cast, he had to learn the Mayan dialect called Yucatec and recite campy dialogue alongside characters with names like Smoke Frog and Snake Ink.

The movie revels in this kind of color, as when a wraith-like child straight out of a J-horror flick warns the warrior tribe to “beware he who brings the jaguar.” Her skin oozes with some unnamed plague, which reduces even the most fearsome men to pale-faced terror.

It takes all of about three seconds to sort out that Jaguar Paw is to be the engine of her prophecy. Before long, but after all his tribesmen have been killed or sold, he leads the bad guys back into the jungle — escaping ritual sacrifice thanks to a handy eclipse — dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He leaps into a waterfall, vanishes under quicksand, turns a buzzing beehive and a rampaging jaguar into formidable weapons, and unleashes all sorts of groovy trip wires and flying mallet contraptions. Brains get the hatchet. Arteries spray. Nature gods are beseeched. And the gang of meanies, led by a demonically scary assassin named Zero Wolf, gets ample time to show off their stunning array of nasal ornaments and tribal tattoos.

When Mr. Youngblood isn’t airborne, the camera lingers on the infinite variations of costumes. Who knew the loincloth was so versatile? Or that the Mayans invented what can only be called “dental bling” centuries before Flavor Flav? Such close attention to details, whether accurate or fanciful, gives “Apocalypto” its rich, otherwordly feel. Mr. Gibson and his team are nothing if not immersive. The visual density gives weight to a narrative that is as light as Mr. Youngblood’s feet. Heck, there’s even an homage to the photographer Sebastio Salgado’s famous images of the Serra Pelada mines in Brazil.

In the end, whatever Mr. Gibson’s public flair for drunken meltdowns and anti-Jew jabbering, his cinematographic sensibility is growing more articulate. And, perhaps, he’s chosen not to risk being misunderstood again, as he claims he was by critics who labeled “Passion” anti-Semitic. “Apocalypto” is stealthy about its politics, on the down-low like a rainforest serpent. It is, however, clearly on the side of the gentle pagan tree-huggers. And, really, what’s not to love? Mr. Gibson may get called a lot of names in Hollywood these days, but for right now, let’s pick an appropriately retro-Mayan moniker: He Who Brings the Popcorn.