Hacksaw Ridge Review (2016)
Director: Mel Gibson
Writers: Andrew Knight, Robert Schenkkan
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Vince Vaughn, Rachel Griffiths
Release Date: November 4, 2016
The story of Desmond Doss sounds like something invented by a Hollywood screenwriter who decided subtlety was overrated. A deeply religious man from rural Virginia, raised Seventh-day Adventist, who enlists in the Army during World War II but refuses to touch a weapon because he believes killing is a sin. Who survives basic training despite being beaten by his fellow soldiers, court-martialed by his own Army, and nearly discharged. Who then goes to the Battle of Okinawa as a combat medic, unarmed, and single-handedly rescues 75 wounded men by lowering them down a cliff under heavy fire while praying to save just one more every time he went back up.
And yet, every word of it is true. Mel Gibson knew he had something extraordinary on his hands and he filmed it accordingly and in the way that only Gibson could direct.
Hacksaw Ridge is Gibson’s best directorial work since The Passion of the Christ, and I’d argue there are sequences in it that rival the battle at Stirling from Braveheart. The film is structured in two clear movements. The first is a character study — Doss’s upbringing, his relationship with his father Tom (Hugo Weaving, excellent as a WWI veteran broken by what he saw), his courtship of Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), and the brutal gauntlet of basic training under Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn, actually impressive in a dramatic role). The second movement is the Battle of Okinawa, and Gibson films it with a ferocity and chaos that puts you on that ridge whether you want to be there or not.
Andrew Garfield carries the whole film on his shoulders and he’s extraordinary in the role. Doss, as portrayed in a film, could easily come across as preachy or saintly in a way that puts distance between you and the character, but Garfield finds the humanity in him completely. He isn’t a saint walking through the film. He’s a man with convictions so deeply held that he’d rather face a court-martial than compromise them, and Garfield makes you believe that from the first frame he’s on screen. The Academy nominated him for Best Actor and he deserved it.
Sam Worthington as Captain Glover and Luke Bracey as Smitty, the soldier most hostile to Doss early in the film, both do solid work. But this is Garfield’s film and Vince Vaughn’s film, and the combination of the two of them across the first half is one of the unexpected pleasures of Hacksaw Ridge. Vaughn has spent most of his career doing broad comedy and you forget he can do this. Here you don’t forget it.
The battle sequences are brutal in a way that earns the word. Gibson doesn’t clean up combat. Men burn and are blown apart. The ridge is a hellscape and he wants you to feel that, because Doss walked back into it over and over without a weapon and without hesitation. The violence isn’t gratuitous. It’s context. Every time Doss goes back up that cliff you understand exactly what he’s going back into, and the courage required to do it becomes something genuinely staggering.
There’s a sequence where Doss is effectively alone on the ridge after his unit has been forced to retreat, and he just starts dragging men to the edge and lowering them down one by one with a rope. Seventy-five of them. Going back again and again into a battlefield that had just swallowed his entire unit. Gibson films it with a quiet desperation that matches the reality of what Doss was actually doing, and Garfield plays it without heroic swelling music or triumphant close-ups. He’s just a terrified man doing the only thing he knows how to do in a situation no one should ever be in.
It’s worth noting that Gibson hasn’t directed a fiction feature since Apocalypto in 2006, and the decade-long gap between that film and Hacksaw Ridge only makes what he accomplished here more impressive. He came back and made something that stands comfortably alongside the best work of his career. The battle sequences alone would justify the film’s existence, but Gibson isn’t content to just deliver action. He wants you to understand the man at the center of it, why he was the way he was, and what it cost him. That combination of ferocity and genuine spiritual sincerity is rare in any film, let alone a war picture.
The first act is slower than the second, and some of the dialogue in the early scenes is a little cornball. The romance between Doss and Dorothy in particular tips into sentiment that feels slightly too polished. But Gibson earned that slower start because by the time you reach the ridge you’re so invested in Doss and the men around him that the battle hits with real emotional force.
Hacksaw Ridge is one of the finest war films of this century. The real Desmond Doss was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Truman in 1945. The film honors what he did, and it does it well.
Hacksaw Ridge gets a four out of five stars: COMMENDABLE.
Hacksaw Ridge sets at #5 on my Top 10 War Movies Worth This Memorial Day article. If you like this one, check out my review of The Longest Day or Midway. For more movie reviews, click here.
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