Best movie I've seen in theaters so far in 2016.

Rating: 8/10 (8 November 2016)

This movie is based on the true story of Desmond Doss, a WW2 medic and conscientious objector who received the Medal of Honor for staying behind and retrieving 75 wounded soldiers from the battlefield.
This is the most brutally realistic WW2 movie since Saving Private Ryan. There's limbs being blown off leaving ragged stumps, compound fractures, all that good stuff. One little touch that I really liked was when it showed long-deceased corpses there were maggots all over the skulls and rats eating the bodies. That's something I've never seen before in a war film so I'm glad they included those details.
All the actors are surprisingly fantastic, from Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss to Vince Vaughn as the drill sergeant to Hugo Weaving as the father, there is not a single weak performance.
There have been many attempts to replicate the effectiveness of Saving Private Ryan, Fury comes to mind. None of those movies have the same effect since we don't care about the characters as much, but thankfully this movie wisely takes the time to develop its characters. The first half of the film largely focuses on Doss' moral dilemma of being a CO and the reactions of those around him.
Also, in Chris Stuckmann's review of this movie on Youtube, he mentions how there was one scene where the smoke clears and one of the characters says "oh no, I lost my cover" and one of the women in his theater covered her face and said "oh no!". I swear in my theater at that exact same moment, there was a woman who shouted "oh my God!" and covered her face. I guess you know you have a suspenseful scene when you get the exact same reaction out of the exact same scene.
Any problems I have with the movie are largely nitpicks. Some scenes felt a little rushed and others felt a little too long. I'm not sure how accurate the film was to the real events, but there was one scene in a tunnel which was the only scene that felt Hollywoodized in any way. Also at the end of the movie they show stock footage, and I personally feel it would've been more effective if it were placed at the beginning for a number of reasons I can't get into without spoiling some stuff.
These little things don't impact the core of the film too much though. This is an emotional, suspenseful, inspiring film, probably the best I saw in theaters this year, and I highly recommend you see it. Its not quite as good as Saving Private Ryan, but it comes pretty close. It might just be because I have a soft spot for WW2 movies, but I give Hacksaw Ridge a 9/10.