Truth in advertising - "Hacksaw Ridge" IS one of the best war films since "Saving Private Ryan".

Rating: 9/10 (4 November 2016)

Have you ever been misunderstood? Maybe you just failed to communicate your thoughts effectively. Maybe you said or did something that cast doubt on your true intentions. Or maybe others just ascribed to you negative motives of people they've known in the past – and failed to judge you based on your own actions. We've all been there, but few of us have had to risk as much for our convictions as World War II Army medic Desmond T. Doss. You see, as a Seventh-day Adventist, Doss took the Bible literally. To him, the sixth commandment means God forbids killing anyone – ever – for any reason – even in war. He volunteered to be a medic in the war, but even in basic training, he steadfastly refused to even touch a gun. The law calls someone like Doss a conscientious objector. His fellow soldiers just called him a coward. That is until they went into battle with him. Desmond's struggle to live out his principles, in spite of what others thought, and through the horrors of war, is the story of "Hacksaw Ridge" (R, 2:11).
As a child, Desmond (Darcy Bryce) developed a strong religious faith – and a strong aversion to violence. He and his brother physically fought each other often. One of those times, Desmond hit his brother with a brick, nearly killing him. Desmond's father, Tom (Hugo Weaving) used to beat his boys, and sometimes got physical with their mother, Bertha (Rachel Griffiths). Tom himself was a shell of a man who never shook memories of the violence he saw as a soldier in World War I, constantly visiting the graves of his friends who died in that war. All of this had a profound effect on Desmond in his formative years.
The adult Desmond (Golden Globe nominee Andrew Garfield) not only wants to avoid doing what he believes God prohibits, but he wants to do good things to help others. After saving the life of an accident victim by applying a tourniquet – and meeting a pretty local nurse named Dorothy (Teresa Palmer) – he develops a strong desire to study medicine. Even as he courts Dorothy, he feels drawn to do his part in the war – as an Army medic. As he says when defending his belief in non-violence, "With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it don't seem like such a bad thing to me to put a little bit of it back together." Desmond may avoid violence, but violence sure finds him – and sooner than he expected. His drill instructor, Sgt. Howell (Vince Vaughn), and his company commander, Cpt. Glover (Sam Worthington), greet Desmond's convictions with frustration. His fellow trainees, especially people like Smitty Ryker (Luke Bracey), express their feelings towards him by attacking him in the barracks. When Cpt. Glover's boss, Col. Stelzer (Richard Roxburgh) gives Desmond a direct order to pick up a weapon and he refuses, the young recruit finds himself facing the possibility of an Army court martial – and maybe prison time.
Eventually, Cpl. Desmond Doss and his company find themselves arriving on the Japanese island of Okinawa in the closing months of the war. Now less than 400 miles from mainland Japan, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps experienced some of the fiercest fighting of the war – with some of the highest casualty rates. Doss' company is tasked with driving the Japanese soldiers off of Hacksaw Ridge – an area of land 400 feet above the beach. To accomplish their mission, the troops had to climb up a rocky cliff face using only a rope ladder – and then face well-entrenched Japanese forces which had vowed to fight to the death. Doss and his company charge straight toward danger. Not everyone would survive, but those who did, were Doss' responsibility – a mission for which he repeatedly put his life on the line.
I often find reviewers' comments in a movie's advertising to be overblown but not in this case. "Hacksaw Ridge" IS one of the best war films since "Saving Private Ryan". The battle scenes in this film are even more graphic and intense than the scenes of D-Day in "Ryan", and features the most realistic Pacific Theater action since 2006's "Flags of Our Fathers". But like those other two, this film is more a story about the men who fought the war than the battles themselves. This is a bio-pic, so there's plenty of character development. It's a story about principles and courage, so there's plenty of struggle and heroism. And, as I said in my first paragraph, this is a story about misperceptions and, in the end, understanding and mutual respect, which contains lessons for all of us. This is a touching human story and an unflinching look at the horrors of war and the value of different kinds of heroism. "A"