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Jaguar Paw is from a minor tribe of Mayans that dwell in the jungle living off the land and generally minding their own business. Their world is shattered forever when a band of warriors from the nearby Mayan city them and capture all the adults – the men are to be sacrificed at the alter, while the women are sold into slavery.

Jaguar Paw manages to hide his pregnant wife and child during the attack, however he has left them in a precarious position and knows he must escape and rescue them if they are to survive. Thus the real fun begins.

Like his foray into Christianity with The Passion of the Christ, authenticity was important to Gibson, so he made sure a majority of his leads were unknowns and were capable of learning, or at least mimicing, the Mayan language. All actors do a standout performance, and Gibson's foreshadowing of a Mayan Empire in decline is well told without it being overtly stated. It kind of lends the viewer to realising how brutal the Mayan culture was (and vicariously the Aztecs and Incas, too), and that the arrival of the Spanish not long after the decline set in, made it all too easy for the Europeans to conquer the land.