Will you hold it against me if I say "Hackneyed Ridge?" Probab;y.

Rating: 5/10 (21 March 2018)

This film wants to be a bio of moral courage in the face of whatever. Sure. I can see how that was the point. But they lost it on the way.
And in the end, to me, absolute and 100% failure. It Is A War Movie. Have no doubts. A lot of the movie is the fighting on Okinawa, from the point of view of the armed soldiers, and their officers and NCOs. Sometimes, briefly, from the POV of the Japanese.
There are occasional cuts to little vignettes of our hero doing things. But they are disjointed and have no obvious point.
And the whole opening, the first hour or so, is tragically maudlin. A trite aw-shucks love story/basic training thing that turns into a slightly put-upon then triumphant but boring victory.
Boring is the deal. Sure the battle scenes are gory, but what's the point of it all? I mean, in the film, why are we watching this? Why does any of it inform anything we're supposed to understand about the morality or faith of our hero?
It all feels like a TED talk. A PPT that tells a Heartwarming Story of Success In Adversity. Or if you prefer, a sermon with a great story. But film should show, not tell. And this thing tells you, repeatedly, what you are supposed to think, then goes off a plays video games for a while in between.