Hacksaw Ridge - Review Thread

American Sniper was boring. As long as this movie is entertaining, the faith stuff may not bother people too much.

That's fine. You'll watch him in Martin Scorsese's Silence a month later.

It might be hard for some to imagine, but there was a time when Mel Gibson was one of the most important of Hollywood figures. He was a successful movie star, a well-respected actor, and had even began to make a name for himself as a serious filmmaker. He won an Oscar for Braveheart and Passion of the Christ was one of the most fiercely discussed films of its time, but for many of us, Apocalypto is his masterpiece. That film showed Gibson applying top-notch craft to a setting rarely depicted in film while simultaneously delivering one hell of an action movie and survival story. The achievement of Apocalypto has been overshadowed however by Mel Gibson’s personal life, particularly a series of derogatory and offensive statements the man made over the period of a few years. I’m not going to defend these claims, but I will say as someone who admired his work as an artist, it was frustrating to see. This is someone who had really blossomed into an amazing directorial talent after all. But after ten years, Mel Gibson has finally returned with the war drama Hacksaw Ridge, an imperfect film, but one that validates why Gibson’s talents are so valuable.

The film tells the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) is a young man and devoted Christian living in Virginia in the 1940s. The son of a bitter veteran (Hugo Weaving), Desmond decides to enlist in World War Two and serve his country. Desmond’s religious practices prevent him from picking up a weapon and killing people, but none the less insists on serving as a medic. He is met by some resistance from army brass, but ultimately is given the go ahead and is sent to The Battle of Okinawa, where he would go on to save over 75 lives.

The first third of the film mostly deals with Desmond’s young romance with a nurse (Teresa Palmer) set against the backdrop of a Norman Rockwell-esque simple American town. This section of the movie is…not good, in fact I’d say it’s borderline terrible. This whole section is just incredibly corny. Desmond is presented as a very simplistic character, we really don’t learn much about his faith in this section, and his budding romance is equally simplistic. The film doesn’t present these two really getting to know each other. There are no meaningful conversations or interesting things learned, the two just engage in some Hallmark style cutesy moments. The film also juxtaposes this with some brief flashes of violence from Desmond’s father which clashed with the rest of the tone. This section does have some bright spots, namely some solid production value and an interesting performance from Hugo Weaving (despite a weird accent) but it’s ultimately not a very promising start.

In the second third, the film shifts to Desmond’s experiences at boot camp. This content is a bit better, in large part because it deals with Desmond’s religious objection and struggles with authority, which are handled more evenly than I would have expected. However this section also suffers from your standard war movie clichés, like the various personalities of the other soldiers and the hard ass superiors. This is yet another movie with an aggressive drill sergeant who hurls insults at his troops, only the stereotype is overwhelmed by the fact that Gibson cast Vince Vaughn of all people in this role. To be fair, Vaughn ends up doing alright, but seeing Vaughn throw obscenities at his troops leans closer to farce than anything else.

Finally, the film arrives at the Battle of Okinawa and Desmond’s acts of heroism and the results are pretty damn spectacular. Gibson may not be the first director to depict the horror, chaos, and brutality of war, but goddamn does he do a spectacular job at it. Gibson’s depiction is particularly primal. The faces of soldiers from both sides are awash with rage and fear while the barbaric levels of violence reflect the savage nature of war. Gibson also shrouds the battlefield in fog, which is important for the plot, but it also serves to give the film the feeling of a horror movie. These battle scenes can be hard to watch for some, but they are brilliantly realized and on a technical level are the best depictions of warfare presented on film in quite a while.

It is amidst this horror where Desmond’s heroics occur and this the real meat of the movie. It is indeed inspiring to see one person save so many lives and Gibson milks these moments for all their worth. Occasionally, the film maybe goes a little too far in celebrating Desmond, particularly at the end when real interview footage is shown of the man. Obviously, Desmond was a hero, but that is apparent in his actions and at times the film’s attempts to force those messages in felt heavy-handed. None the less, Gibson’s execution of this section is amazing. Desmond’s heroism is moving and it’s also very thrilling.

I suspect Hacksaw Ridge was, to some extent, a calculated effort on Gibson’s part to return to Hollywood filmmaking safely. The story is that of straightforward heroism and it returns to a moment of history which has been documented several times in mainstream cinema alone. There is no ambiguity or moral questions to leave with, this is simply an uplifting story of heroism and Gibson embraces the saccharine in the first act fully. However Gibson also used the film as an opportunity to continue to excel stylistically. The film presents an unflinching look at warfare that is both horrifying but also highly compelling. This is not a film I can wholeheartedly embrace. I think large chunks of the film are questionable and even poor at points, but that third act offers some spectacular cinema and for that reason I still think Hacksaw Ridge is worth seeing in theaters. The film is also further proof that for whatever personal failings he’s had, Mel Gibson remains a powerhouse filmmaker when working with the right material.

B-

Hacksaw Ridge(12/19/2016)

It must take a special kind of insanity to willingly go to a theater to see a movie you’re 90% sure you won’t like out of some strange belief that you need to be involved in “the conversation.” That’s especially true when you’re under no professional obligation to see anything and the range of people who care about your opinions is… limited. Still, for whatever reason I do feel a certain pressure to go see certain movies that have a degree of relevance critically or commercially or in awards season. In the case of Mel Gibson’s new movie Hacksaw Ridge I was desperately afraid that would end up happening. The film’s trailer makes it look awful; like the worst kind of pandering mess made to appeal to the lowest common denominator and I was desperately afraid that it would become a big red state hit along the lines of an American Sniper or Gibson’s own The Passion of the Christ, but that never really ended up happening. The movie actually did end up earning a good sixty million dollars at the box office, but it certainly wasn’t an unavoidable sensation. Oddly enough, the critics were actually more enthusiastic or at least they were a lot less harsh on it than I expected, but they weren’t swaying me either. What did finally force me to break down and see the damn thing were the award bodies. Somehow the movie managed to make it to the National Board of Review’s top ten, and then it was nominated for a BFCA award, and then it somehow even managed to get a best picture nomination from the Golden Globes. What the hell? I’m now pretty worried the thing could somehow get an Oscar nomination (if The Blind Side could do it…), and given that I felt I had to see the movie so that I could complain about its success with credibility.

The film tells the true story of Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), a man who grew up in rural Virginia in the Seventh Day Adventist church and believed in a strict form of pacifism because of this and because his father Tom Doss (Hugo Weaving) had awful experiences during the First World War. However, once World War II began, doss felt much the same obligation to fight as his peers did and as such he enlisted but only under the provision that he be trained to be a medic and not be forced to personally fight or even carry a weapon into battle. This is met with skepticism by his fellow cadets as well as his drill instructor Sargent Howell (Vince Vaughn), and he’s even sent to face a court martial for his unorthodox demands, but eventually he gets his way and he’s deployed with the rest of his unit to Okinawa where they’re all asked to take over a heavily fortified position at the top of a steep ridge… the Hacksaw Ridge.

Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan has to have been one of the most influential movies released in my lifetime. Before that movie there really weren’t that many World War II combat movies being made at all and the ones that were getting made didn’t look anything like the ones that have been made since. Today it’s pretty much impossible to depict that war without muted colors, graphic violence, and soldiers who don’t look like action heroes. However, time has dulled the effect of this style and what was once exhilaratingly original is now kind of a cliché. Between Flags For Our Fathers, Fury, Pearl Harbor, Enemy at the Gates, Defiance, Windtalkers, Miracle at Saint Anna, two separate “Band of Brothers” series, and various video games I kind of feel like this style has been run into the ground. That’s not to say that filmmakers absolutely need to stop making their World War II battles like this, just that this kind of spectacle alone does not really impress me anymore and I need the film itself to be doing more. That is a problem for Hacksaw Ridge given that it’s one and only really redeeming feature is that much of its second half consists of an elaborate re-enactment of the battle atop Hacksaw Ridge, which is admittedly pretty well staged but adds almost nothing to the usual WW2 battle formula outside of its general size and the amount of screen time it takes up. This sequence is notably gory even by modern war film standards, which isn’t an inherently incorrect decision given that the film wants to juxtapose the main character’s pacifism with the horrors of war, but Mel Gibson has long had something of a sadistic streak in his directorial efforts and it’s not hard to question his motives here.

It’s a good thing that the film eventually does at least become a serviceable battle movie because pretty much everything else about the movie absolutely sucks. Andrew Garfield, an actor whose talents are increasingly appearing to be rather suspect plays Desmond T. Doss as the most punchably earnest sap that you could ever imagine. His accent seems notably phony (a problem the movie has in general given that almost all the actors except Garfield and Vince Vaughn are from Australia) and Garfield never really makes this character seem believable or grounded. Granted this is partly the fault of the material he has to work with, which can charitably be described as hagiographic. If there’s any moral grey area in Doss’ decision to conduct himself in the way he did, the movie completely dismisses it in it pursuit of canonizing this guy. Also, make no mistake, the fact that this guy was a pacifist is not really what the movie finds so admirable about him. The movie does not give a damn about universally ending warfare and is very much of the belief that Japanese violence needed to be met with violence. What the movie really likes about Doss is that he was unapologetically religious and that he “stuck to his guns” on the topic. The film was clearly designed to do well with the “faith based” audience and I’m thinking that the goal was for evangelical audiences to view the film as a sort of allegory for their own struggles in the face of public ridicule as they protest the teaching of evolution or picket abortion clinics or whatever the fuck those people are doing now.

Really there’s no limit to how corny this movie’s first half is with its goofy flashbacks, half-assed romance sub-plot, and silly court room theatrics. It’s perhaps a testament to Gibson’s skills as a filmmaker that the movie ends up feeling bad rather than howlingly terrible by the time it ends, which is the result of a combination of that battle scene being pretty decent and just a sort of Stockholm syndrome that makes you inured to some of its dumber elements by the time you get to that second half, but make no mistake this is not a good movie. It’s easily Mel Gibson’s worst directorial effort and I’m genuinely baffled that so many critics have completely given this thing a pass and that these awards bodies are giving it the time of day at all. I for one would genuinely rather re-watch Pearl Harbor than sit through this thing again.

*1/2 out of Five

I don't disagree that it's well staged in theory but I feel like the movie has already kind of shot itself in the foot at that point.  Andrew Garfield is still delivering that eye-rollingly wholesome performance and all the human interactions at that point are still really poorly written and frankly by that point I'd already checked out.  If anything the competence of that battle scene makes the whole thing more frustrating.  If Gibson had given me characters I could care about instead of these cliched archetypes it would have been so much better.

That might be my favorite Dracula review of 2016.

First of all, I'm not a "millitant atheist". I can introduce you to some real "millitant atheists" if you'd like. They're... Interesting. Secondly, I'm more than happy to give good reviews to movies about religious people and spirituality when they aren't corny bullshit like this. Hell, I think I'm on record as saying The Passion of Joan of Arc is my fifth favorite film of all time.

I agree. I've yet to see Silence (hopefully this weekend, by mid-next week at the latest) but the book is fantastic. I really hope he doesn't sink that thing.

I stand corrected, Dracula - my apologies. I still don't think this is 1-and-a-half star material, though. Have you seen Monsters 2? That's more of a 1 and a halfer.

I see. Yeah, it's not high up on the list of war movies I have seen, either. Maybe it's getting accolades from being released in a year where it didn't have much competition.

Hmmm.

I don't get it. I loved this movie.