Hacksaw Ridge

Aziz Ansari did a stand up bit on SNL a couple months back talking about how some people voted for Donald Trump the same way that they listen to Chris Brown music. How Make America Great Again is Donald Trump’s “These Hoes aint loyal”. I think in a way, the same can be said for Mel Gibson movies. There is a reason that when the first trailer for this movie hit, they never put Gibson’s name in the trailer and instead said, “From the director of Braveheart”.

Mel Gibson has clearly had a rocky career and if you’re out there thinking that you can’t support him as a director because of the things he has said, I wouldn’t blame you one bit. However, this is the last time in this review that I’m going to be talking about Mel Gibson as a person and I will instead discuss his work as a director and the merits of his newest film, Hacksaw Ridge.

Hacksaw Ridge takes place in the middle of World War 2. Everyone is enlisting and joining the Army to fight the Axis. Our story centers on a young man by the name of Desmond Doss (played by Andrew Garfield) who despite having a religious objection to killing and violence towards other people, joins the Army and aspires to become a combat medic. His philosophy is that while the rest of the world is going around tearing each other apart in war, he’s going to try and put things back together as a medic. So he joins the Army but refuses to kill anybody and refuses to even touch a weapon.

Now the movie is basically broken up into two segments. The first segment is a little slower and it centers on Doss joining the Army, refusing to pick up a weapon and the conflicts that come along with being in the Army, an organization that centers a lot on the act of killing other people. Now when I say slower, I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. The first half of the movie spends a lot of time getting to know the character of Desmond Dos and the people around him. Hugo Weaving plays his drunk abusive father, Rachel Griffiths plays his mother. The first section of the movie is focused on a love story between Doss and his girlfriend and later wife, Dorothy Schutte (played by Teresa Palmer).

And I will say, this is a really fun relationship. It’s definitely not the focus of the movie and besides a small moment where she questions why he can’t just pick up a weapon, show them he knows how to use it just to get them off his back, there’s not a lot of conflict between these two. The way they develop their relationship is very reminiscent of the way you’d expect your grandparents got together. It’s very innocent and it’s kind of like an American fairy tale where everything is so certain and so quick that it’s almost like it was meant to be.

And part of that only works when you take in the performance of Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss.

Doss is this happy go lucky guy with not a care in the world. He’s so optimistic and so happy that you can’t help but like him. I would say it’s very similar to the almost dumb simple mindedness of Forrest Gump because he says things with such optimism and innocence that it actually doesn’t seem one hundred percent realistic. Luckily, Garfield does a great job in this because he keeps that optimism and that innocence throughout the film and he keeps it consistent.

It also works within the context of the film because this guy is tested on what he believes and how strong his resolution is towards those beliefs. Especially in the first act of the movie when he joins the Army and refuses to pick up a weapon.

Vince Vaughn plays Doss’s Sergeant and Sam Worthington plays his Company Commander. When they discover that Doss is a conscientious objector, they are baffled by the resolution of this guy and only want him out of the Unit. And to be one hundred percent honest, I don’t really blame them. Their mindset is that if he is unwilling to pick up a weapon and defend not only himself but the other members of his unit, what use is he on the battlefield.

Being familiar with the inner workings and the mindsets within the United States Army, I know that this is not an unwarranted concern and while I understand that the point of the movie is to point out how wrong they are, I was sitting there kind of wondering how he actually got through the whole legal process that works against Doss and tries to kick him out of the Army.

The members of his unit fall under the same belief that Doss is a coward and would not have their back in a fire fight. Luke Bracey plays one of the Soldiers in his unit and he’s one of the biggest critics of Doss in the beginning. I only have really seen Luke Bracey in that crappy Point Break remake and I honestly didn’t recognize him at all in this film, one because he didn’t have that stupid long haircut, but he also did a really good job in this film. He’s portrayed as the rival to Doss from the very beginning but you know that eventually they’re going to come together in the heat of battle and have each other’s back.

Again, while the first half of this movie is slower, I actually think I enjoy it more than the second half. It’s got a lot of character development, a lot of great acting, and a really interesting story about a pretty controversial topic, conscientious objectors on the battlefield. I don’t think the subject is as cut and dry as the movie makes it out to be, but it’s actually pretty interesting how they address it in the film.

The second half of this movie is after all the legal discussions and it finally gets Doss and his unit out onto the battlefield in Okinawa, and the notorious Hacksaw Ridge. What follows is an incredibly violent and incredibly heart breaking display of war that I really haven’t seen since Saving Private Ryan. Anybody who thought that the first half was Mel Gibson getting away from his extremely violent roots were reintroduced to the Mel Gibson we know from Braveheart, Apocalypto, and The Passion of the Christ because the second half of this movie is very bloody, very gory, and does not pull any punches. But the second half of the movie does not work without the character development of the first half. You care about the characters from Doss, to the members of his team, to his sergeant, to his commander, everyone means something to audience and you want them to be saved and survive the battle… and not everyone does.

If you have a weak stomach or you don’t really like war movies, you might think Hacksaw Ridge is not for you. But I would disagree. There is such an optimism and testament to the human spirit in this film that it’s definitely worth checking out. The performances of everyone from Andrew Garfield, to Vince Vaughn surprisingly is very good. Before I even saw this movie I knew that it wasn’t going to win a lot of awards, especially at the Oscars. As much as I want to say that the awards are given to the person who deserves it the most, I do understand that a lot of the process is political and it would look very bad if the Academy gave an Oscar to someone like Mel Gibson who has basically been Hollywood poison for the last decade. I do think that Andrew Garfield really shined in this movie and probably should have been considered a little more for Best Actor, however, I do recognize that it was a stacked year and it must have been a difficult choice for those picking who wins.

Regardless of what award it won and didn’t win, Hacksaw Ridge, in my opinion, is one of the best made films of 2016. I’ve spoken about this in previous reviews on Oscar nominated movies, but it is all about personal preference. Moonlight didn’t speak to me the same way it did for a lot of people. It didn’t speak to me the way La La Land did and La La Land didn’t speak to me the way Hacksaw Ridge did. The jury is still out on which of the Oscar nominated films were my favorite, but I still have to watch Arrival.

But overall, I really enjoyed Hacksaw Ridge. I definitely recommend this one and while I don’t condone the past behavior of a guy like Mel Gibson, I do have to take the man out of his work and the fact is, his work is really well done. I do hope that we see more of Gibson’s work in the future because Hacksaw Ridge is a really powerful film and definitely worth checking out.

Those are my thoughts on Hacksaw Ridge. What did you think? Did you enjoy that film? What is your favorite war film? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I’ll leave you with this. Stephen Colbert had Mel Gibson on his show when Hacksaw Ridge debuted and the exchanges in the interview with him are actually pretty well done. Enjoy!