Hacksaw Ridge - Bloody Hell

It's so easy to get distracted by Mel Gibson's public persona that forgetting what a great talent he is as an actor and director can be easily forgiven. He can be a bit, umm... eccentric, but to me that's what makes him and his work so fascinating. When you get down to it, Mel Gibson is a self loathing masochist with a martyr complex and hyper-masculinity issues that can only be the result of a devout religious upbringing. While these characteristics result in the behavior that made him such a big tabloid magnet, they're also what make him the perfect man to spearhead such films as Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. And with Hacksaw Ridge, he has found a new conduit to explore his favorite subjects.

Our story follows Desmond Doss (played by Andrew Garfield), a devout World War II combat medic who served in the Battle of Okinawa and became the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor, having braved the front lines without ever carrying or firing a weapon. After an incident that nearly lead to the death of his brother, Desmond had a deep sense of pacifism instilled into him from an early age. Despite carrying these beliefs into adulthood, he insists on enlisting in the army against the protests of his fiancee (Teresa Palmer) and his father (Hugo Weaving), an abusive alcoholic World War I veteran with a severe case of survivor's guilt. His refusal to even touch a rifle during training or train during Saturdays (Doss was a Seventh Day Adventist) made him an outcast among his peers and a subject of ridicule among his superiors (Sam Worthington and Vince Vaughn among others), but remains steadfast in his convictions, even when he's thrown into the mouth of Hell.

The most common complaint that I've heard from critics is how excessively violent this movie is. On one hand I see where they're coming from; it seems counter-intuitive to have such a staggering amount of carnage in a movie that's all about pacifism, but I'd argue that the scenes of bloodshed are justified. Mel Gibson's films are infamous for their gratuitous violence, the Battle of Okinawa was one of if not the single most bloodiest battles of World War II, and they serve as the perfect challenge to our hero's convictions. After all, what better way to make someone question their pacifist ways than by throwing him in the absolute worst situation imaginable? The opening shot shows soldiers dodging explosions, firing guns and dragging themselves through muck in slow motion, a stark contrast to the saccharine first half of the movie, which is shot like something out of the Hallmark Channel. But when it's time for the soldiers to fight, the movie kicks things into high gear with a cavalcade of gruesome viscera. Upon climbing up onto the plateau we're greeted with maggot and rat covered corpses, one soldier grabs a limbless cadaver and uses it like a human meat shield as he charges the enemy lines, other soldiers start tossing artillery shells over the trenches like footballs after their cannons stop working, men start screaming in each other's faces right before they're vaporized by grenade fire, the list goes on and on. This is without a doubt the goriest World War II movie I've seen since Saving Private Ryan.

Throughout the chaos, Desmond remains vigilant, speeding across the battlefield to patch up the wounded, dragging them to their stretchers, and refusing to let anyone die, even when they beg him for the sweet release of death. Even when his unit pulls back, he stays behind to search for survivors, tying them up in ropes and lowering them down the cliff to the army base below. All the while dodging Japanese soldiers who are hunting down and snuffing out the survivors he's trying to rescue. He even runs into and heals a wounded Japanese soldier while hiding in a foxhole. Theses scenes highlight why I think the violence in the movie works. While any other person would throw their inhibitions aside and start going all Rambo on the enemy in an attempt to get out alive, Desmond held on to his beliefs and keeps true to his oath to God to never take a life, even when he's in a situation where doing just that was the most surefire way of save yourself.

I also have to commend the film for not trying to cram its message down the audience's throats. I was afraid the movie was going to start getting really preachy since this is a story about faith, and the main character and director are both devout Christians, but thankfully it never goes all God's Not Dead on us, and successfully conveys its message in a non patronizing way.

The film is not without its shortcomings, though. For one, the acting is a bit spotty at times. Nobody does a bad job or phones it in, but there were a few roles that I felt were a bit miscast. Andrew Garfield does a terrific job as Desmond Doss, showing a greater commitment to playing a well meaning hero with a deeply ingrained moral code than he did in The Amazing Spider-Man. Hugo Weaving without a doubt gives the stand-out performance as Desmond's father, portraying a deeply emotionally broken man scarred by the horrors of his past and haunted by the ghosts of his friends, who can only cope by drowning his sorrows in booze and lashing out at his loved ones. Seriously, if Weaving doesn't get some kind of award for this role, I'm going to be really upset. Desmond's fellow soldiers do a serviceable job (although Vince Vaughn as the drill sergeant is easily the oddest casting choice here), but none of them particularly stood out to me. I can barely even remember any of their names. But then again their characters are kind of flatly written and aren't given much character or depth until they start bleeding. There are also a few pacing issues. The early scenes of Desmond's life before war which mostly consist of him meeting and wooing his future wife were too saccharine for my taste and went on for a bit too long. It also starts dragging it feet in the last ten minutes, ending with a drawn out scene that mirrors the opening shot of the movie before transitioning to an obligatory epilogue text scroll and real life interviews with an old Desmond Doss and some of the men he saved. These weren't enough to kill the mood for me, but I wish it didn't end in such a typical fashion and I think I would be giving this movie a much higher score if they had shaved a few minutes off.

Overall, Hacksaw Ridge is a cartoonishly pornographic gore fest of a war film, while simultaneously being as sincere of a movie about faith as you're probably going to get out of Hollywood. Your mileage may vary depending on your opinion on Mel Gibson and your tolerance for gratuitous violence, but it's worth checking out nonetheless if for no other reason than for you to draw your own conclusion. But as far as gory religious films go, I'll take this over The Passion any day of the week.

8/10