I disagree with the notion that watching films with gratutious violence is wrong. Just like I disagree that watching boxing or football is wrong. However watching porn is wrong because it is directly condemned by Christ.
One must be careful with this use of freedom. We should not use it to cause others to stumble. In other words I may be able to watch the movie in good conscience, but my wife can’t. I should not berate her because this kind of movie offends her. I have to careful less I begin to think less of those who don’t want to watch these kinds of movies.

*Warning* Spoilers ahead!
I saw Apocalypto last night. It is EXTREMELY violent – in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a more gruesome movie. And some of the scenes are almost unbearable: women being raped (this is alluded to, not seen), children being ripped away from their mothers’ arms, men having their hearts cut out from their chests while they’re still living, decapitations, and endless bloodshed. And the cruelty of the Mayans; it’s absolutely despicable. I cannot even begin to tell you how this movie portrays the savagery of the Mayan culture. It’s shocking. But here’s where Dreher doesn’t seem to ‘get it’. Gibson wasn’t trying to shock us for its own sake; no, he brilliantly depicted a world void of the Light and Life of Christ; a world of sin and death, deeply saturated in demoniacal influence. So much so, that at the very end of the movie, when all hope is seemingly lost, we catch a glimpse of the Spanish Conquistadors, and with them a priest bearing the cross of Christ. And no joke, I heard an audible gasp at this sight, as if the audience were saying ‘Thank you! The Lord is come!’
McCain: And…nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Sorry, could not resist.
People will see this very graphic and disturbing film, and they’ll think it just another example that Gibson has lost his marbles. And maybe he has, or maybe he’s prophetic, and he’s calling America to repent of its own savagery, sugarcoated in affluence and educational, technological and medicinal advances.

It appears that Gibson is following Flannery O’ Connor’s maxim:
“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience…to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large startling figures.”

O’Connor wrote about writing, and about portraying through words, not about film, which is a different medium with a different power. She didn’t say ‘Be graphic in your physical images.’
But, following your proffered quote to its logical extension: are you, then, such a ‘hostile audience’ or ‘almost blind’, that you can only ‘get it’ when you’ve been bombarded with gore?
What’s the difference between withstanding the gore for the film’s greater message, and suffering the centerfolds of Playboy for the great articles?