Uneven "Hacksaw Ridge" Is A Pro-War Movie In Anti-War Packaging
Andrew Garfield (“99 Homes”) headlines as Virginian Desmond Doss, son of Tom (Hugo Weaving) and Bertha (Rachel Griffiths). As a young boy Desmond comes to embrace pacifism with one thwack of a brick to his brother’s melon. Terrified by what’s he’s done, 8-year-old Desmond has a come-to-Jesus moment, literally facing down a framed print of the Ten Commandments. We jump forward fifteen years and the now longtime peacenik counterintuitively but passionately joins his brother in enlisting in the Army, to the great chagrin of their father, a former military man himself.
Newly in love with a nurse named Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), our hero is determined to take his love’s work with him – to serve as a medic. Once thrown into the mix with an unruly company and a ruthless sergeant (an out of place Vince Vaughn), Desmond has no choice but to proclaim himself a conscientious objector. Because of his religious faith he won’t touch a weapon, much less fire one, putting him on a long and winding road of trials and jail time with some beatings thrown in for good measure. He never breaks.
The first half of the film is all old-fashioned cornball military drama, with Garfield underplaying the southern charm just enough to keep things interesting. The supporting cast is uniformly forgettable, but it’s not their story. Screenwriters Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan understandably put all of their attention on Doss, and Garfield is charismatic enough to cover over his director’s incapacity for subtlety. A war movie about a pacifist should engender some restraint, but Mel Gibson is not that kind of director. For a while the picture rolls on the strength of the material and its lead actor. Unfortunately, those wheels fall off at the halfway mark.
In as long as it takes to pull a pin from a grenade, a story of one man’s principled stand for his country but against violence becomes a pornographically violent war movie that frequently strays from its lead character in the heat of battle. Faceless hordes of Japanese soldiers are convincingly made literally faceless, with Desmond occasionally popping up to carry a wounded soldier to safety. Eventually there’s a genuinely terrific sequence in which our hero saves dozens and dozens of lives, but not until after “Hacksaw” becomes the thoughtless war movie it thinks it’s rebuking.
Gibson still has considerable talent for staging carnage, depicting the grisliness of World War II’s Pacific theatre as one exploded kneecap away from an “Evil Dead” movie. It’s wondrous and then appalling, going all too far in showing the absurdities of war. Most of the bloodshed isn’t even from Desmond’s point of view. Just adrenalized flashes of battle that undercut the screenplay’s reverence for its lead.
In total, the film is so mawkish and hawkish that it ends up with nothing to say beyond “Desmond Doss was brave!” An inarguable sentiment to be sure, although not close to the measured, subversive take it might (or should) have been. Instead it’s a morally foggy film, a pro-war movie in anti-war packaging, its director ultimately hoisting himself by his own petard. Like Gibson himself, “Hacksaw Ridge” is full of talent but internally embattled, coming up short where it really matters.
-J. Olson
Rating: ★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★★ (Mediocre)
Release Date: November 4, 2016
Studio: Summit Entertainment (Lionsgate)
Director: Mel Gibson
Screenwriter: Andrew Knight, Robert Schenkkan
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Vince Vaughn
MPAA Rating: R (for intense prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence including grisly bloody images)
the reviewer is a jaded punk with no knowledge of real world experiences. He is a poor excuse for even a put down artist. He must be paid in bags of weed.
Not a pro-war film. Stupid review.
Like other “reviewers” who pan the movie, they are reviewing Gibson as much as his movie. Something tells me that they don’t mention the abuses of Polanski, Allen, Depp, and others who have committed far worse sins than Gibson each time they review their movies.
Such a stupid review way of the pace, when the film is really an anti war film, cause that”s what real war is really like, there is no classic scene of winning just for Hollywood.The Battle scenes in this film[ Better than private Ryan] are so realistic, that maybe this journo could not take it like many others.But hey that”s real war!!
you are an idiot!
Mel Gibson is not a very nice human being, to put it generously if one is to judge by his drunken rants (that said, I know a lot of decent folks that when drunk….). Now you can morally take a position that if someone is not a good person in your own judgement, whether it is moral to buy their product. In my case, unless the offense amount to an actual crime, I frankly don’t much care what the individual’s life is like. It is hard not to think that the reviewer disagrees with that point of view and no matter what movie Gibson makes, the reviewer will say it is bad. I find that intellectually dishonest…fine if he said: “I won’t review this movie because I find the director a despicable individual” but being so subjective about a movie without disclosing motives…that’s dishonest.
And if he really just didn’t like the movie, then my apologies, the above don’t apply and we really just have very different opinions on what makes a great movie, but I thought it was one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Was it anti or pro war? I don’t think that Gibson intended it as neither… I think he intended to show the power of faith (I’m at agnostic on my best days and an atheist the rest) but I can appreciate the power of people’s faith and I think Gibson does a great job at showing that on this film…alternatively the power of one owns conviction when you are a high moral individual (it’s hard to me not to tie it to religion, knowing how religious Gibson is reported to be, but that my be, just like the reviewer, my own bias). He shows how atrocious a war is, but how if you are a decent human being, you can behave honorably even under those circumstances and that what the “herd” is doing does not exonerate you from behaving honorably. He also makes the case that war is necessary some times. He also show people can be honorable on the other side (the Japanese aren’t this demons that are all bad, they show honor and courage as well) Particularly with our recent election, I think it was a refreshing reminder that listening to people with opposing point of view without demonizing them is a wise course of action.
What an idiotic review. This movie would have 100% if it weren’t for bigots. Either they slate it simply because Ginson is the director or they slate it because it celebrates Christianity. To state that this movie is pro war is insane.
If movies have secular liberal or atheistic or transgender or feminazi or gay or lesbian messages or anything else besides celebrate the fact that Christianity has been and remains to be a major part of our history and culture that’s ok with people like you right? Millions upon millions have been persecuted and martyred for their faith including the founder himself- Jesus. The fact that there are over 250,000,000 Christians in the U.S alone should give a good enough reason to make movies like this no? Truth is the real terrifying thing is people who are so bigoted and resentful towards Christianity have been running government, Hollywood, education, and mainstream media for far too long. It is people like you who have been silencing the majority and celebrating the minority with a cultural colonisation of anti Christian ethos. Obviously we must respect minorities but people are sick of the minorities controlling our culture.