Don't believe me? Let's open with an early passage from the second tablet:

"There will come to you a mighty man, a comrade who saves his friend--
he is the mightiest in the land, he is strongest,
his strength is mighty as the meteorite of Anu!
You loved him and embraced him as a wife;
and it is he who will repeatedly save you."

Enkidu is a wild man, the prototypical Starsky to lawful Gilgamesh's Ur-Hutch. Though their partnership opens on a rough note (with a knockdown, drag-out brawl through the streets of Uruk) the duo quickly build a relationship based on mutual respect, brotherhood and copious amounts of homoeroticism.

Like the reformed jewel thief played by DMX in Cradle 2 the Grave, the renegade comes in from the wilderness for justice, revenge (or in Enkidu's case, a totally sweet wedding feast) that evolves into a permanent lifestyle change as the wild one comes to respect the laws of society under the influence of a powerful lawbringer (the god-king Gilgamesh, represented here by Taiwanese Special Agent Jet Li.)



Gilgamesh and Enkidu cement their newfound partnership by paying a visit to the Uruk weaponsmiths (the ancient Sumerian equivalent of the precinct gun range) before embarking on a quest to seek and slay the great demon-god Humbaba, guardian of the divine Cedar Forest. Enkidu's decision to aid Gilgamesh against the wild god Humbaba is significant, because the wild man was originally created to oppose the tyrannical excesses of the god-king and protect the people and the wilderness. This is an archetypal test of faith for Enkidu, who must sacrifice his previous ties to the wilderness (as Sam Jackson sacrifices his reputation to protect Bruce Willis from an angry Harlem mob in the Die Hard series) for the sake of brotherhood.



Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeat the demon, and Enkidu convinces his partner to slay Humbaba despite the god-king's pity for a vanquished enemy. The wild man fails the test of civility and reverts to his primal nature, a failure that presages a fall from grace (figuratively in the case of Brad Pitt's murderous rage at the conclusion of Se7en, fatally for poor Enkidu.) Later the pair hunt and defeat the Bull of Heaven, and when the goddess Ishtar protests Enkidu literally rips the Bull's ass off and throws it at her.

"Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of
Heaven!"
When Enkidu heard this pronouncement of Ishtar,
he wrenched off the Bull's hindquarter and flung it in her face:
"If I could only get at you I would do the same to you!"

Enkidu's bravado and disdain for authority prove to be his undoing, as the gods lay a fatal curse upon him in retribution for the murder of Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. The wild man pays for his "bad cop" antics with his life, much as Denzel Washington buckles beneath a hail of Russian gunfire during the denouement of Training Day.

The death of the wild man reminds the "good cop" that justice without the blessing of the gods (or the law) is a venal sin, and Gilgamesh mourns his fallen brother for days before condemning Enkidu to the earth and walking off into the sunset. Raise soundtrack, roll credits.