Top Mel Gibson mad movie moments

It appears our Academy Award winner has some anger management issues as witnessed by his current troubles with estranged girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. We avoid the personal Mel (per our legal team’s request), and instead focus on some of the once-beloved actor’s finest moments on screen and behind the camera.

• “Mad Max” — Gibson arrived at the audition for his breakthrough movie with a swollen nose, broken jaw line and numerous bruises from a drunken brawl the night before. He was perfect for the part. ” … I’m one of them, a terminal psychotic, except that I’ve got this bronze badge that says that I’m one of the good guys,” Mad Max says.
• “Lethal Weapon” — In the buddy-cop movie, Gibson plays Martin Riggs, former Special Forces soldier, who becomes a suicidal killing machine after the death of his wife.
• Says Riggs, “They think I’m faking to draw a psycho pension.”
• “You’re not trying to draw a psycho pension! You really are crazy!” says Gibson’s sidekick, played by Danny Glover.
• “Braveheart” — Gibson plays the Scottish warrior William Wallace, who can’t get enough of decapitating Englishmen.
• “Fighting these odds, it looks like rage, not courage,” says Robert the Bruce to Wallace.
• “It’s well beyond rage,” responds Wallace.
• “Payback” and “Edge of Darkness” — Revenge is a dish best served by Mel. Whether out for blood after being shot in the back by his wife in “Payback,” or on a rampage after the death of his daughter in the brutal 2010 police thriller “Edge of Darkness,” welcome to Mel hell.
• “The Passion of Christ” — Film critic Roger Ebert, who rated the Mel Gibson-produced movie four-out-of-four stars, wrote in his review: “The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.”
• “Apocalypto” — The Washington Times wrote: “Once again, a Gibson movie traffics in sadistic violence. Instead of Jesus Christ getting flayed within an inch of his life, we have Mayans literally losing their heads seconds after watching their hearts get scooped out of their chest cavities.” Tasty.
• “The Vikings” — Gibson’s next project is to direct Leonardo DiCaprio in a Viking epic, with Norsemen, pillaging, raping, burning and decapitating — you guessed it — the English.
• “The real problem is making those guys [Vikings] sympathetic,” says Mel. “They were monsters.”
• You can do it Mel. That said, is Leo still returning your calls?

— Compiled by John Haydon, with apologies to all Mel Gibson fans