Rudy Youngblood, who plays the lead character (called “Jaguar Claw”) in Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (Touchstone, 12.8), has his own site. And on the main page he writes about how he’s unable to say anything about his part in Gibson’s bloody action film about war among the ancient Mayans: “I have had an amazing year and a lot of things have happened for me in my life,” Youngblood relates, “[and] I wish I could talk about where I am right now, but contractually I can’t.” In a piece about Apocalypto in the current Esquire, Luke Dittrich writes about an unauth- orized visit to the set in Mexico, which was somewhere south of Vera Cruz. On page 104 Dittrich offers a synopsis of the plot, which is basically “about good Mayans vs. bad Mayans,” he writes. Youngblood’s “Jaguar Claw” is “a Mayan prince who lives in a peaceful village,” but then Mayans “from a less peaceful but more powerful tribe invade Jaguar Claw’s village…raping, pillaging, burning. They kill many of Jaguar Claw’s friends and family and take others, including his pregnant wife, prisoner. The prisoners are hauled off to a city of massie pyramids, where they are to become sacrificial fodder. Jaguar Claw organizes the remnants of his tribe [and] trains them in the art of war” with the goal of “wreaking vengeance and liberating their people.” Basically, Dittrich concludes, Apocalypto is “Braveheart in the jungle.”