Directed by:
Mel GibsonCinematography:
Simon DugganComposer:
Rupert Gregson-WilliamsCast:
Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Milo Gibson, Richard Roxburgh, Nathaniel Buzolic (more)VOD (4)
Plots(1)
The true story of Desmond Doss who, in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle of WWII, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. He was the only American soldier in WWII to fight on the front lines without a weapon, as he believed that while the war was justified, killing was nevertheless wrong. As an army medic, he single-handedly evacuated the wounded from behind enemy lines, braved fire while tending to soldiers and was wounded by a grenade and hit by snipers. Doss was the first conscientious objector to ever earn the Congressional Medal of Honor. (Lionsgate US)
(more)Videos (18)
Reviews (17)
Some moments Hacksaw Ridge come across as simple and half-baked, but the film works at the emotional level. And it
displays perfect work with eye-pleasing visual reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood. But Braveheart went deeper
into the character conflict, and the hero’s rebellion was more passionate. Hacksaw Ridge, on the other hand, remains
“just” a well-rendered war drama, made more brutal by blood and guts and a hundred violent firefights. Andrew Garfield is good in his best role so far.
()
Hacksaw Ridge just premiered in Dublin yesterday and I'm glad I got to enjoy it on the big screen. The film draws the viewer in from the very beginning with a very unconventional performance from Andrew Garfield, I think the boy has a lot of talent in him and will do some interesting things in the future. The first hour is very emotional, beautifully romantic and psychologically intense. The training session is perhaps the best I've ever seen (Vince Vaughn surprised me), it even gets to my favourite court scene, so awesome all round. Once the film moves to the battlefield the rawest war hell ever filmed begins. Mel Gibson gets absolutely unleashed and serves up some very brutal, violent, realistic, gripping, thrilling and captivating action that had me gasping and screaming out loud in the cinema like I haven't in a long time. I was nearly hit by a chill from how perfect it was. An incredible experience where the scares work more intensely than in The Conjuring. Whether the Oscar will be won by a romantic LALALA for women and fa*s will be a big mystery to me. The fact that there were all seniors sitting around me in the cinema who could have participated in the war itself added to my experience. 100%
()
If the child version of Andrew Garfield had been hit in the mouth with a brick at the beginning of Hacksaw Ridge instead of his movie brother, the whole film would have made a lot more sense. I wasn’t really sure how seriously I should take a young man with the face of a divine simpleton who isn’t overly familiar with how interpersonal relationships work, let alone international politics. In any case, the film takes him seriously enough to gradually lose all credibility. Instead, it offers an enormous dose of stupidity. It seems to me that the final Assumption scene wandered into the film from an unaired Monty Python sketch. The concept that forms the basis of the entire film is reminiscent of the theatre of the absurd. To make the hero of the biggest explosion of disembowelled guts and blown-off heads since Saving Private Ryan a very devout pacifist who rejects violence of any kind strikes me as a rather cruel irony. It doesn’t seem, however, that Mel Gibson is aware of that. He doesn’t use the scenes of slaughter (which soon become numbing rather than shocking) to lead Desmond to the realisation that war is a lot more hellish than he imagined it would be (in which case the contrast of the first and second halves of the film would have worked better), but to show how hard the boy will have it if he wants to survive longer than a split second without a rifle in his hand. The creation of a hero who rejects violence is thus paradoxically conditioned by pervasive violence. If his buddies had not been torn to pieces by the bullets and grenades of the savage Japanese (an ethnic stereotype that went out of fashion along with John Wayne), he could not have become a hero. I don’t doubt that someone else will find clear logic in what I myself see as an irreconcilable contradiction, but even if it didn’t seem to me that the film is ridiculous at its very core, I would have a hard time finding reasons to recommend it to anyone as an example of the best of what has been made in Hollywood this year. We have seen powerful and generally uncluttered depictions of the pandemonium of war many times before, and the clear narrative structure and textbook segmentation, thanks to which such films never even start to be boring, are qualities that have characterised American films for many decades. Hacksaw Ridge, however, is somewhat underdeveloped both intellectually and formalistically. 60%
()
Anachronous slag. The first third is a pure zero. Is the character demented? Does Mel like Forrest Gump, but does he not understand exaggeration? Is Vince Vaughn a perverted joke? Something so awkward belongs to the ideological enclosure of the 1990s. Fortunately, there is the second half and Call Of Duty: Holy Warfare, a dense war porn with slasher elements that constantly spoils the wild face of Garfield the cat and Mel's inclinations to burnt religious-patriotic symbolism (the verticals and ceilings, well, wow). But the naughty old man is still great at doing intestines and limbs. Everything around is nevertheless still one big loose stool. Despite the scheme, Ryan had some suitability. This is a biblical-patriotic drapery beyond the edge of endurance. That end is pure wtf. The good soldier Messi. Paraphrase of a platoon crossed with the Assumption? Give me a break. I'm not an Adventist.
()
Gibson will cut you into pieces. It starts as romantic fairytale about human values and then switches over to hell. Doss’s story begins with a very fond view of the past, growing up, a fundamental faith in God all mixed with a complicated relationship with his father (the fantastic Hugo Weaving), a veteran of the First World War and a drunk. The romantic interest is dealt with precisely, somewhere between Forrest Gump and Braveheart, which is exactly what this story needs. The training centre section was a little confused, but as soon as the platoon sets foot on Okinawa, you no longer care. No pussyfooting from Gibson, he serves us reality in its fiercest form. He presents war in a terrifying, raw and very realistic way, but the sensitivity with which it was filmed gives it a stamp of beauty. The image composition is so fantastic it’s almost unbelievable, the same as the story. Heroic transfer of Doss’s wounded comrades, saving lives¬… sometimes even Japanese, hiding in tunnels and bloodbaths. Excellent casting, dominated by Garfield (a great balance between simple farmer and an ardent believer-hero). He does the work expected from him. This movie might never have been made if it wasn’t for Gibson’s Hollywood repentance, and that would have been a great shame. Now we want him back, ready for combat, and I hope that he dusts off that Viking bloodbath that he was meant to make with DiCaprio.
()
Ads