Well, I said I was going to knock off two movies Mel Gibson made that were based on true war stories, and here’s the second. This time around, he’s the director, so I won’t be seeing him. Granted, I had some other issues with Hacksaw Ridge that I will get into below, but perhaps this time around Gibson realized he was too old to play the lead. As such, at least I get the talented Andrew Garfield as real-life war hero Desmond Doss, a man who didn’t believe in acts of violence but voluntarily joined the army anyway.

It’s easier to ignore someone who I’d rather avoid if I can’t see ’em, and this one is, like We Were Soldiers, is on that big poster I am trying to fill in.

Desmond Doss (Garfield) is a religious man who, after nearly accidentally killing his brother during a fight, decided to never use violence again. There’s more to it than that, but that’s how the opening scenes of the movie frame it. As an adult, he shows some skill at basic first aid but never had the grades to get into medical school. After Pearl Harbor, he, like many men of his generation, felt the need to serve, much against the advice of his Great War veteran father (Hugo Weaving). However, Doss decides to go in as a medic, someone who can save lives rather than take them. That plan seems to work at first until he’s told to take a rifle, and Doss politely refuses to compromise on his spiritual beliefs. He will not handle a weapon.

From there, Doss needs to endure first the abuse of his fellow soldiers and then, once the unit arrives at the title location, to survive the battle. The Americans have been scaling a high cliff and attacking the Japanese up at the top for quite some time, and nothing seems able to dislodge the Imperial Army from the top of the mountain. All Doss wants to do is save lives. Can he do that without getting himself killed and prove he has the courage his fellow soldiers all claimed he lacks?

In many ways, this is a very traditional war movie. In an era where most war movies seem intent on showing the horrors of war in a more nuanced way like, say, Saving Private Ryan or something along those lines, Hacksaw Ridge comes across as a more throwback sort of war movie. If anything, Hacksaw Ridge is close in spirit to something like Sergeant York, the Alvin York biography that showed a pious man joining the army and doing some truly impressive work almost single-handedly during an ugly battle. Doss does much the same, only instead of taking prisoners, he’s pulling people off the battlefield and saving lives, including a number of his former tormentors and more than a few wounded Japanese soldiers. Garfield is a charming presence, and his Doss is a quietly powerful man who just wants to do right by God and country.

However, it is worth noting that the thing I was hesitant to see the movie for, beyond the director’s tarnished reputation, came from a line in a review I read that said something to the effect that, for a movie about a pacifist, there sure was a lot of violence. That fits. Gibson’s directorial efforts don’t skimp on the physical trauma to the human body. Granted, I have only seen Braveheart before, but I do know both The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto by reputation as being rather violent movies in their own rights. While Hacksaw Ridge does show the horrors of war, this is a movie where an American GI picks up a corpse missing its lower half and uses it as a shield while bullets riddle through men on both sides left and right. Hacksaw Ridge is not a subtle movie either in its themes or its execution both in how Doss was treated before he got to the battlefield and then when he arrives at the front. It’s a bit much, but as an old-fashioned war movie, it actually largely works. It’s like a really good 40s or 50s era war movie with a lot of blood and guts spilling out. Could the story of Desmond Doss been told without the excessive violence? Sure, but I don’t think Mel Gibson as a director could have told it that way.

Grade: B+


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