Hacksaw Ridge [Review by Haus]

Hacksaw Ridge is sincere, gritty, and brutally shot — which can also be said for pretty much every soldier on screen.

This is the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a devout Seventh Day Adventist from the American South who refuses to touch a gun, but nonetheless enlists in the Army during the Second World War. His division doesn’t much want him, but Doss weathers boot camp beatings and bucks every attempt by the system to cough him out. Eventually his wish is granted, and he’s sent off as a medic to the Pacific Theatre in 1945, where he distinguishes himself in Okinawa with tremendous bravery. All this is evident from the trailer, and story-wise, there’s not too much else going on.

But that’s plenty for director Mel Gibson to work with. Gibson — who took a ten-year hiatus since Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ before that, and who mercifully has elected to at least script his latest Christian apologia in a living language — returns to his Braveheart roots here with extreme and drawn out battle sequences, war terrors, deep patriotic utterances, and a rousing orchestral backdrop. Say what you will about Gibson’s drunk-stop demeanor (and he certainly continues to wear his Christian beliefs prominently indeed) but when on-screen battle calls he does seem the man for the job.

Comparisons with Saving Private Ryan are inevitable. Nearly twenty years ago, Steven Spielberg shocked darkened theaters with a merciless and ultra-realistic depiction of the D-Day invasion and its aftermath. Since then, similar levels of war grit have become more or less routine — see, e.g., Band of Brothers, Black Hawk Down, et seq. But Hacksaw Ridge marks a new level in Hollywood’s quest for shock value clothed as realism. The fighting here is drawn out, verging on senseless, and death comes often and randomly and instantly and with smoke and soil and crispy flesh and exploding faces and soaring viscera. (Really. There’s more guts here than a back-to-back grindhouse feature.) Anything Spielberg left to the imagination in his own D-Day sequence — and there wasn’t much, frankly — you’ll see here, and probably twice. For war gore, this one takes the cake (at least for now).

But Hacksaw Ridge is a much smaller picture in scope than Private Ryan ever was. Whereas Private Ryan played like an ode to the Greatest Generation, seeming eager to run a broad brush over the entire European theater, Hacksaw Ridge portrays one man’s slice of the war, focusing just on the titular battle.

I think Gibson made the right move here. We hardly need a primer on World War II, and besides, any non-Spielbergian effort to capture the vastness of that conflict seems doomed to trivialize it. (Pearl Harbor, anyone?) By focusing on one man’s journey, then jumping straight to one battle, Gibson tightens his focus and lets the real story (and everyone’s insides) come out.

After an eye-opening intro that foreshadows the gore to come, the first chunk of the film traffics in prim nostalgia: We see Doss’s upbringing, his cheery faith-rich youth, his sometimes-vicious father (Hugo Weaving – good), his gosh-darn-it gee-whiz courtship of a lovely nurse named Dorothy (Teresa Palmer – a Haus favorite), and his struggle through enlistment and boot camp. That boot camp introduces a gosh-darn-it gee-whiz multicultural melting pot of fellow enlistees, as well as Vince Vaughn‘s wisecracking “Sarge” for some light comic relief, and Sam Worthington‘s captain to advance the institutional agenda of Who The Heck Is This Pacifist Anyway. It’s all very pure and clean, though the squeaky-clean romance and teary-eyed jingoist speeches of act one can be a bit much.

But once Doss is adjudged able to go into battle unarmed, we’re suddenly thrust right there with him. And this is what Gibson does best. To experience an extended, brutal gunfight that turns men to hamburger from the perspective of an unarmed medic is an interesting narrative device. (Though one wonders whether the real Desmond Doss would relish, as Gibson so clearly does, making us all watch.)

There’s some good filmmaking work on display here, and I suspect we’ll see some nom-noms come spring. Andrew Garfield is great, as is Vaughn. Worthington does a solid job too, despite some awfully cheesy mea-culpa-logues. Teresa Palmer acquits herself well with her Southern drawl. You’d never guess she’s an Aussie. The supporting cast is generally good too, when they’re in one piece at least.

All told, Hacksaw Ridge is a powerful film. It will leave you in awe of Doss’s actions on a particularly brutal battlefield, and also with an appreciation for his religious convictions. Gibson tries a little too hard to fetishize these, and even to characterize Doss’s actions as saintly or miraculous or whatever, but hey, who’s surprised? At least they’re speaking English. (Gibson also strays toward weirdness in his treatment of the Japanese fighters at times, but I’m prepared to ignore that.)

I can’t help thinking that Doss’s do-no-harm tale perhaps deserves a film a bit less fascinated with human innards, but this is a worthy and memorable story with great performances and intense action. Grit your teeth, brave the guts, and see it — it’ll be one less thing to catch up on come Oscar season.

Haus Verdict: A jarring and powerful war movie offering a refreshing take on heroism, alongside a not-so-refreshing dunk into Mel Gibson’s fascination with human agony. See it.    

Hacksaw Ridge opens Friday November 4.

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