Andrew Garfield, in his most mature leading role to date, plays Doss. The character is a spiritual, soft-spoken, conscientious objector who enlists in the army to serve as a medic. Prior to hearing about this film, I was not familiar with the story of Doss, who saved the lives of over seventy men during the Battle of Okinawa, en route to receiving the Medal of Honor. Without question, Doss' dedication to his faith, his men, and his country was heroic; certainly worthy of depiction in film. Garfield has earned praise for his performance, and has even been nominated for several notable awards and honors. Personally, I don't see this as award-winning acting, but Garfield does do the job of coming across as morally righteous, yet extremely courageous, which is vital to understanding this character. The supporting cast is made up of Sam Worthington, Teresa Palmer, an excellent Hugo Weaving, and a slightly out of element Vince Vaughn. Garfield, however, occupies most of the screen time and holds his own at the center of the story.
"Hacksaw Ridge" marks Mel Gibson's return to feature film directing after 10 years. There are definite similarities between this film and his greatest triumph as a director, "Braveheart". "Hacksaw Ridge" is incredibly violent, possibly even more so than "Braveheart", but for the most part, viewers get the sense that the brutality of the movie's battles is honest. Gibson intentionally avoids sugarcoating the nature of World War II, and specifically the conflict in the Pacific. There are plenty of corpses, explosives, and lost limbs to give the picture a distinctive Mel Gibson edge. Aside from the action however, it is easy to see why Gibson was drawn to the character of Doss. Like William Wallace of "Braveheart", Doss is a hero with pride and personal ideology guiding his decisions. I enjoyed many of the choices made by Gibson in directing this film, and for a movie with a surprisingly low budget, the spectacle is huge. However, I feel that occasionally in Gibson's films, spectacle overshadows story, which at times is the case with "Hacksaw Ridge".
This may be unfair, but in my head, every war movie is immediately stacked up against "Band of Brothers". The mini-series is the greatest depiction of life on and around the battlefield that has ever been put on a screen. It will take one hell of a film to ever match up with "Band of Brothers" in terms of accuracy and sincerity in depicting modern warfare. Again, I realize that this way of thinking is likely completely unreasonable (after all, "Band of Brothers" is not even a movie), but I can't help it. Where "Hacksaw Ridge" lacks is not in its action or its hero story. My grumbles with the film lie in the number of typical war movie clichés that it exudes. These include; the degrading authority figure who yells in his soldiers' faces, the overconfident trooper in camp who flounders on the battle field, and the fact that everyone must receive a semi-humorous nickname, among others. The best war films are the ones that limit the presence of these predictable factors, or at least don't rely on them to create and introduce supporting characters. "Hacksaw Ridge" falls victim to these, but the extraordinary story of Desmond Doss assists us in overlooking them. With "Hacksaw Ridge", Mel Gibson has familiarized the world with one of the most courageous figures in American history, and for that he should be commended. Evidence of the heroism of Desmond Doss lies in the fact that Gibson cut things out of the medic's story, because he felt that audiences would not even believe them. This is not one of the great American war films, but what makes it entertaining is the resilience of its central character combined with bold, engrossing battle sequences. In the overall compendium of World War II films, "Hacksaw Ridge" falls somewhere in the middle, but it is surely a candid account and a worthy installment.
RATING: 7.5/10
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