A brutal and effective filmmaking return for Mel Gibson.
The story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector awarded the Medal of Honor for his contributions in World War II’s Battle of Okinawa, is the kind of true story that was going to be made into a movie sooner or later. Frankly, it’s surprising that it hadn’t been already, and with Hacksaw Ridge, Doss’ heroics have finally been brought to life on the big screen. In one of the more talked about returns of the year too, as the film comes from director Mel Gibson, who has come back to the theaters with his first directorial outing since 2006's Apocalypto.
Gibson is at times both a perfect and odd choice to direct Hacksaw Ridge. His paradoxical love of both violence, war heroes, and men of peace has been established thoroughly in his previous films Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ, the latter of which threw its peaceful lead savior into a bloody world of cruelty and torture that could have easily made you forget you were even watching a Biblical movie in the first place.
Where those contradictory passions might have hurt Hacksaw Ridge under less steady hands however, Gibson uses his admiration of Doss’ peaceful conviction and equal love of bloody, giant spectacle to accurately mirror the same moral dilemma Doss was forced to face every time he stepped onto the battlefield. The war sequences themselves are just as chaotic and technically sound as the opening of Saving Private Ryan, managing to not only bring you to almost panic-inducing thrills, but also leaving you horrified of the carnage and death that war leaves in its wake.
Despite opening with a brief promise of the violence to come, Gibson makes you wait until about halfway through the film before actually bringing you onto the Battle of Hacksaw Ridge. Instead, he takes time to explain and build up Desmond’s pacifist beliefs, which are spurred on after a nearly fatal fight with his kid brother, and the constant presence of his alcoholic, abusive WWI veteran of a father (played humbly and angrily by Hugo Weaving). Flash forward to fifteen years later, and Desmond (Andrew Garfield) eventually courts Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), a nurse he meets at his local hospital. Their romance feels so idealized, naive, and almost too innocent at times that it’s hard not to shake your head at some of the extremely corny dialogue both Palmer and Garfield have to give during some of their first scenes together.
It’s when Desmond eventually enlists and is sent to Basic Training that Hacksaw Ridge begins to truly build up momentum, as we’re introduced to the rest of his men in his infantry, which are made up some of extremely predictable and stock characters like the mouthy, confident Italian, the intelligent one, the competitive, angry one, and so on. Again, Hacksaw Ridge isn’t particularly inventive in terms of its characters or how it deals with the standard war movie tropes, and it doesn’t feel like it was ever going to be either. Luckily, and in spite of some of Desmond’s comrades feeling very thinly sketched, the entirety of the training sequence is brought to life by a scene-stealing Vince Vaughn as the troop’s commander, Sergeant Howell, and the comfortably low-key Captain Glover (Sam Worthington).
While Desmond’s time at training seems to be going well at first, it’s when things start to go wrong and become more complicated that Hacksaw Ridge becomes increasingly more interesting and enthralling to watch. Where he is able to excel at all of the fields of training that he’s asked to, it’s when Desmond refuses to pick up or even touch his assigned rifle that things begin to go downhill. Both Howell and Glover urge him to quit the army, fearing his pacifism is damaging the troop’s morale. This includes letting his fellow soldiers beat him in the middle of the night, before he’s eventually court martialed and almost thrown into military prison for the entire duration of the war for disobeying direct orders.
Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a war film if Desmond never got to see an actual battlefield, and after a particularly tense and tear-filled court case scene, he’s able to join the rest of his troop in the fight of Hacksaw Ridge, which, as Glover tells them, could help the Allies beat the Japanese Army. Told to take off his white and red medic symbols, Desmond climbs the ridge with the rest of the comrades into a battle against the Japanese that can be accurately compared to nothing short of hell on earth.
Filled to the brim with blood, spilled out guts, intestines, fire, dirt, and a whole lot of gunfire, it wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say that Hacksaw Ridge has some of the greatest war sequences ever put on the big screen. A lot of that is thanks to the expert build up that Gibson injects before the first battle scene, as your fear and dread begins to rise the closer to the battlefield the soldiers get, but there’s no denying the complete artistry Gibson brings to the actual battle sequences here. They manage to be both chaotic and terrifying, while still easy to follow. You never lose track of familiar characters for too long, and the lost sense of security that invades the soldiers’ psyches makes you feel more paranoid and claustrophobic the longer the fight goes on.
It might seem strange to say that truly grotesque and violent war sequences actually improve a movie about a wartime pacifist, but it’s because Gibson doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war that Desmond’s true bravery and courage is able to shine through. Andrew Garfield gives his best performance since The Social Network, fully encompassing the character throughout the entirety of Hacksaw Ridge. Garfield never loses his grip on Desmond’s emotional and philosophical drives even through the film’s more bombastic sequences. Thanks to the large spectacle of the film, it’s likely he might be overlooked in the coming awards seasons but don’t count him out as a possible contender just yet.
Featuring stunning performances from his entire ensemble and some truly horrific, awe-inspiring war sequences, Gibson manages to make his comeback film a successful one with Hacksaw Ridge. The opening half can feel stunted at times and the heavy-handed ways with which Gibson drives the film’s themes home isn’t necessary most of the time, but there’s no denying the visceral and emotional force that he has packed his film with.
The Verdict
At times horrifying, inspiring, and heart-wrenching, Hacksaw Ridge is one of the most successful war films of recent memory, which works because it doesn’t toss aside the most vital of Desmond’s beliefs: that life must be protected as much as possible, no matter what. You don’t need to look much further than the reaction one of Desmond’s patients gives when he washes the blood off their eyes for proof of that.
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