Thanks for the kind words but you're giving me waaay too much credit. After I finished watching the movie I rushed back to this conversation to read everyone's reviews and opinions, and all I could say was , how am I going to follow this?

Yes, there were intense moments, but this is the first film I've watched since Sling Blade that had me yelling and squirming in my chair and which made time seem to stand still. I was completely enveloped.

PS, that sequence in the movie you speak of was another one that had me cursing and yelling, and I was so hoping that fat little kid would fall off the back of the platform! That entire scene was very significant to the whole experience of the movie.

Where I feel it fell short though was the way in which Jaguar Paw was saved from death. Unless there was some previous reference to lunar events to tie it in, I felt using an eclipse of the sun to distract the ceremony at that moment was too coincedental. IIRC they were making these sacrifices to a sun god right? Even still, it just let me down a bit, but that feeling was quickly dispatched as the movie progressed.