Review: HACKSAW RIDGE

HACKSAW RIDGE
(WAR/BIOPIC)
3.5 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Mel Gibson
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Hugo Weaving, Ryan Corr, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Luke Pegler, Richard Pyros, Ben Mingay, Firass Dirani, Jacob Warner, Goran D. Kleut, Harry Greenwood, Damien Thomlinson, Robert Morgan, Nathaniel Buzolic
Rated R for intense prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence including grisly bloody images.
131 minutes
Verdict: Mel Gibson's return behind the camera is a powerful if imperfect epic of heroism, conviction, faith and trauma experienced in war and a refreshing deviation from Hollywood's recent militaristic hagiographies.
YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN HACKSAW RIDGE IF YOU LIKED:
BRAVEHEART  (1995)
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN  (1998)
FURY  (2014)
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS  (2006)
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA  (2006)

It's probably fair to say that, at least artistically, Mel Gibson has something of an obsession with violence.  Not violence specifically, but the degradation and destruction of the corporeal human body that comes about by violence in an old school Catholic kind of way.  Of his four directorial films prior to HACKSAW RIDGE, three of them are exceptionally brutal in their depictions of violence and they become progressively more so.  It's interesting then, that for his first film as a director in a decade he chose as his subject a pacifist, especially when morally problematic and aggressively pro-military war biopics have been so popular with Hollywood during the past few years.  Of course, even though the main character is an uncompromising pacifist, he's an uncompromising pacifist within the context of the Battle of Okinawa, and Gibson goes no-holds-barred in the battle also known as the "typhoon of steel."

The movie is largely in two parts, the first beginning with Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield) before the war, growing up in Virginia as a Seventh-day Adventist, deeply affected by a time when he went too far while fighting with his brother, and witnessing the broken nature of his war veteran father (Hugo Weaving) who attempts to dissuade his sons from signing up when the specter of a world war once again appears on the horizon.  Despite a lack of schooling, Doss pursues an interest in medicine, as well as Dorothy Schutte (Teresa Palmer), a nurse he meets while giving blood and begins to date.  Firm in his resolution not to kill his fellow man, or even to touch a gun if he can avoid it, Doss is similarly certain in his resolve to not stand by as everyone else goes overseas, so he enlists to be a medic despite his status as a conscientious objector.  His refusal to handle firearms comes into conflict during training though, resulting in fierce persecution and even violence from his unit run by Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn, returning to a dramatic role though also providing much of the film's comic relief) as they attempt to expel him rather than bear the burden of a fellow soldier who won't fight.  This first half of the film culminates with a court martial against Doss over his refusal to take part in firearm training, and his wedding with Dorothy.  The second half of the film brings Doss and his unit to the titular Hacksaw Ridge in the Pacific, where they're only the latest batch of men to be thrown into one of the fiercest battles of the war, testing Doss's convictions and proving his mettle and worth as a pacifist on the battlefield.

Gibson's battle scenes, unsurprisingly, are among the most explicit and gruesomely horrific ever committed to a major motion picture, upstaging SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with images of men rendered into unrecognizable masses of meat and blood by relentless gunfire and scenes in between where the rats swarm onto the corpses, their humanity physically stripped away by the savagery of war.  If these kinds of deaths were isolated incidents, it would be tempting to laugh in reaction to the extremes, but as they occur in rapid succession, the horror sets in.  The battle action is intense, occasionally terrifying, packed with the overwhelming booms of grenades and artillery, and gory deaths dealt randomly and relentlessly (after SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, it's pretty much figured that at least within the context of historical military combat, the R rating is limitless).  There is a visceral excitement to the chaos, but Gibson's penchant for grisliness is a frequent reminder of the horror, and some of the scenes, especially when Doss and his company first climb over the ridge, would belong in a horror movie.  The alcoholism and abuse of Desmond's father is earned when the trauma of war is finally realized, and in contrast to half-hearted, jingoistic, soldier-worshipping movies like AMERICAN SNIPER (I realize that I may have some unresolved issues there), HACKSAW RIDGE embraces the effects of war head on as characters wrestle with their consciences and witness the devastation a "heroic" war record has wrought on someone like Desmond's father.  Again, it's a little ironic that such a tremendously violent film is centered around Desmond T. Doss, a man who refused to kill even in combat, but instead went in to save the lives of dozens of men.  He's not a simple sap, though.  He's experienced violence in his life, and through his faith as a Seventh Day Adventist, establishes an unyielding resolve against it.  To be honest, the inflexibility of of his intention to not even touch a firearm during his training begins to seem unreasonable as the other soldiers go to extremes to shake him from his convictions, but Gibson doesn't fully reveal the background of Doss' stubbornness until the character has earned our understanding on his own, more immediate terms.
While Gibson's worldview heavily involves the breaking down of mortal body and the cleansing nature of pain and suffering, Doss is a character of great compassion and humanity within that worldview.  The movie reaches its climax as he continuously returns under enemy fire to the hellscape of the battlefield to retrieve his wounded comrades, and even some wounded among the enemy, to the point of exhaustion and pleading in prayer to "save one more," and then another.  The battle does continue some time after this sequence, to the film's detriment, in order to carry through to an overall victory, which has become unnecessary to this story.  Randall Wallace, screenwriter of BRAVEHEART, was previously attached to write and direct the movie, and considering his sometimes overwhelming indulgence in sentimentality and schmaltz (the man also wrote Michael Bay's PEARL HARBOR), I wonder how much of his material made it into Gibson's finished film as it's biggest weakness is some excessive sentimentality.  There's something to the idea of showing interview footage with the story's subjects in an epilogue, but it plays too much like a Veteran's Day public television documentary following the raw ferocity of what it follows.  Scenes early in the film depicting Doss's childhood are pretty corny, but are less problematic coming so early on.
Maybe they're not so pervasive as it seems, but there have been a lot of movies in recent years ostensibly about heroes who's heroism is so rooted around violence, and while violence is a crucial element of drama, there's a problem if Superman spends so little time directly preventing death and injury while instead inflicting death and injury upon enemies, or the big claim to fame of a war hero is the record number of people he's killed.  We should aspire to more, and Doss is the kind of hero that truly inspires.

                                                                                                                                                 Images via Summit Entertainment