Review | Film review: Hacksaw Ridge – Mel Gibson’s triumphant return in gory war drama
Andrew Garfield brings a serene empathy to his role as real-life pacifist Desmond Doss, who saved more than 70 fallen second world war comrades, in a gore-soaked, sweeping old-fashioned epic
3.5/5 stars
Ten years after Apocalypto, Mel Gibson returns to directing following a decade of personal crises that threatened to sink his career. Employing the same grand canvas as his previous efforts, including the Oscar-winning Braveheart and box office smash The Passion of the Christ , Hacksaw Ridge is an epic second world war drama centring on the true story of Desmond Doss, played by an excellent Andrew Garfield.
A Seventh-Day Adventist and self-confessed pacifist, Doss nevertheless enlisted as a medic in the US army and was shipped off to the Pacific. His refusal to carry a firearm saw him clash with superiors, but he persevered through horrific victimisation. During the Battle of Okinawa along the titular cliff-face, Doss saved the lives of 75 men, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honour – the first time it’d been bestowed upon a conscientious objector.
Shot in Australia with a largely home-grown cast, Hacksaw Ridge is a sweeping old-fashioned epic, opening in idyllic small-town Virginia, before following Doss’ hardships and pitfalls in basic training, and ultimately erupting in gratuitous violence – as Gibson’s films invariably do – on the battlefields of Japan.
