"Hacksaw Ridge" is a simple movie but that doesn't place it anywhere in the realm of being a bad movie. It’s the story of an army medic named Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) who rescued over 70 men without shooting a single bullet.
The plot doesn’t begin and end with that though, there’s a progression here. Doss grows up a deeply religious young man in a small town and falls in love with a nurse (played by Teresa Palmer) working at a local hospital. We get a sense of his troubled upbringing with a veteran father whose drinking has taken a turn for the worse on more than one occasion but Doss remains a positive force in his family and community at large. His decision to join the armed forces is met with some resistance but, to the dismay of his mother and deeply regretful father, he does join.
At this point in the film, things speed up into Doss’ training and discrimination at the hands of his commanding officers and squad because of his refusal to wield a firearm. Here Doss displays his persistence in wanting to be a combat medic despite all the abuse. The war battles are reminiscent of "Saving Private Ryan" in many aspects. The raw emotion and desperation of war is present in every soldier's face and, surprisingly, we get little of Doss for most of the war sequences but appropriately so.
The battle sets a precedent with its unapologetically realistic gore and other violence. This is where the movie shines. The camera work is brilliant in the first encounters with the Japanese soldiers. Both sides are just as desperate to win as the other and it shows on every character.
It seems as though there are no “bad guys” here which is appropriate for a war setting. Director Mel Gibson sells this with a scene on the tail end of the movie where Doss saves a Japanese soldier from bleeding out. The antagonistic vibe is there but you can tell these men are just following orders in a struggle to defend their countries.
The Americans retreat eventually after much death and here is where Garfield shines. He operates alone rescuing over 70 men sneaking past enemy forces while he does it. The tension in these scenes make the movie for me because he could get caught and die at any moment.
Most of the tension comes from the fact that he will never use a gun. One glance and he dies. One of the few gripes I have with the film is the first act as well as the general delivery of the actors throughout. Most are one-note side characters that seem interesting at first but aren’t elaborated on. This becomes a problem when you see some intentionally emotional scenes of some of these men dying but it doesn’t really hit you because of their lack of development.
The first act in general kind of drags 10 minutes too long. Gibson needed to choose whether to make a full-on war movie or a campy romance because we get inklings of one and not quite enough of the other broken up by army boot camp scenes.
Overall, I think this film is this generation's "Saving Private Ryan" with a couple missteps thrown in the mix as far as pacing and side characters. With that said, it is very much a worthy war movie that everyone who isn’t faint of heart should see.
7.5/10: remarkable war film with a strong main cast but a weak supporting one.
