His shtick, with both The Passion and Apocalypto, is to make you *feel* the violence, to *feel* the action. He's far more interested in revealing imagery than developing the characters. Now, you can argue with both that because these films are set in period and the attempt is made to make the language accurate that he still should adhere to historical accuracy, which I can understand the argument for. But if Gibson's main objective is historical accuracy, that's not represented on the screen. In my opinion, not unlike the Neveldine/Taylor films (going back to my comparison), he is going for very over-the-top visceral violence and action over elements like dialogue, storyline, and "message" (the message IS the violence in The Passion, so that's kind of an exception).

Obviously because Crank is in contemporary LA, fleeting images provide satirical content. One could argue Gibson does the same thing with insensitivity. Again, I understand, and I can't tell anyone it is or isn't offensive... it just didn't bother me because its primary objective didn't seem to me to be to present a period piece.