Mel Gibson merges a vision of the hell of war and great human heroism, and it's a masterpiece!

Rating: 10/10 (22 February 2017)

I had about as much interest in seeing a new film by Mel Gibson as I had in submitting to a root canal, but I found "Hacksaw Ridge" a complete revelation and one of the best films of the year.
Gibson has had a scattered directorial career since winning the Oscar in 1995 for his second film: the entertaining if overrated "Braveheart". In the following two decades he managed to direct only the sadistic and overwrought "Passion of the Christ" in 2004 and his mystical visionary work, "Apocalypto" in 2006. And now, after a ten year hiatus, he's given us what seems likely to remain his crowning achievement, the deeply-felt true story of World War II army medic Desmond Doss (played by Andrew Garfield), the conscientious objector who earned the Medal of Honor by saving dozens of his fellow soldiers in the Battle of Okinawa while refusing to even hold a weapon. Although the violence in this film is the most explicit and shocking of any war film ever made (it truly makes the opening battle at Omaha Beach in Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" a playground fistfight by comparison), in context it's never gratuitous or offensive. The horrendous battle scenes never drive viewers out of the theater for two reasons, both important cinematic principles. First, in the film's first half Gibson gets viewers so emotionally involved with the main character, particularly with the relationship with his father (Hugo Weaving) as well as with the woman he loves (Teresa Palmer), audiences will easily accept the subsequent scenes of hell by caring so much. Secondly, Gibson portrays the battle scenes like great frescoes -- with bloodied, limbless bodies exploding and flying about within moving tapestries like peripheral details within a Bosch triptych. What makes this production more astonishing is that "Hacksaw Ridge" was an independent film produced on a relatively low budget, most of its battle scenes having been shot in New South Wales, Australia in an area not much larger than a football field.
A noteworthy success on every technical level possible, with marvelous performances by the entire cast (most notably Vince Vaughn and Sam Worthington), Gibson's achievement here is impossible to overrate. He has made not only one of the finest war films ever made, but also a cinematic chronicle that contrasts the bloodiest and most brutal acts of man's inhumanity to man with a profoundly moving, moralistic act of civilized human behavior amidst the worst hell of the human experience. This is a film not to miss.