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Mel Gibson returns to the director's chair with the World War II drama "Hacksaw Ridge," bringing his great gifts for epic filmmaking and his problematic tendencies.
The movie tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the only conscientious objector ever to receive the Medal of Honor. Doss, portrayed by former Spider-Man Andrew Garfield, is a devout Seventh-Day Adventist who enlists in the Army in 1942 but refuses to pick up a rifle. The movie's first half shows Doss enduring the hardships of boot camp, with his captain (Sam Worthington) and drill sergeant (Vince Vaughn) determined to break him while his bunkmates move from loathing to grudging admiration of his strong faith.
We also see his WWI veteran father (Hugo Weaving) and his abusive treatment of Doss' mother (Rachel Griffiths), and we see Doss' romance with a pretty nurse, Dolores (Teresa Palmer). The movie's second half moves the action to Okinawa, as Doss' unit joins the brutal effort to take a cliff-top fortification from the Japanese.
Gibson, as he did in "Braveheart" and "The Passion of the Christ," captures the horrors that weaponry can visit upon the human body better than most filmmakers, and the Okinawa scenes make the D-Day landing in "Saving Private Ryan" look like a church picnic. Where he falls short, despite a solid performance by Garfield, is in portraying Doss' complicated view of faith without feeling simplistic or messianic.
'Hacksaw Ridge'
Opens Friday, Nov. 4, at theaters everywhere; rated R for intense prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence including grisly bloody images, 139 minutes.