Good film that's short of greatness

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2016)

I watched this in the theater and I enjoyed it very much and would've rated it at 8 leaving the cinema. But as I thought about it, it left no lasting effect on me nor did I feel that I would watch it again.
This is a one-time-viewing film.
I liked the drama at first, the family stuff and his background, but it felt like a briefing than a story on its own. We spend all this time establishing a connection with the character (given a reason to care about him) and then we place him in danger so that we worry about him.
It's formulaic, straight from a generic scriptwriting course.
The result of that is the film looks like two films. The story of our protagonist and his family life, relationship, etc. and then an action film.
They are two separate films. We did not even see him go back to his family, back to his girl, hometown. As soon as he goes to Hacksaw Ridge, that's the end of everything from part one.
What I would've liked is better editing, intertwining the two stories, flashbacks, references, have two stories running in parallel. The only time this happened was when he recounted as story of his father's drunkenness. It happened once and that was the end of it.
The rest of the film is just an action survival film. Survival films come in all flavors - Apocalypto was one, the Revenant was another, and there's a whole slew of them.
This story is very straightforward - there are no twists or surprises. There's nothing to discuss after.
There are things that are not explored - his reason to not carry arms is not religious, but personal. No one called him a hypocrite on that. (His fiancée suggested pride, and said swallow your pride, but that's not the same thing). His father bore arms in WW1, his brother 2, so it's not against his religion, it's against his own personal convictions (a promise he made to himself after wrestling his drunken dad once).
There's also no reason why he can't just do the target practice to tick the checkbox. The Bible says nothing about shooting practice. He would not have to kill anyone in the war and there would be no one forcing him to shoot at anyone. He just had to pass a test.
Guns are not just used to kill people, but people also hunt animals, not for fun, but for population control, because even if you're a vegan, some animal populations are destructive to agriculture.
This blanket ban on guns was his own invention, but he presented it as religion and no one called him out on it which is strange.
And when he was confronted on his belief system, he did not tell his superiors that "instead of carrying a gun, I could carry so much more morphine/medical supplies/bandages/etc" or "Instead of carrying a gun back and forth, I can bring the wounded faster because I'm traveling lighter" - all these are sensible arguments that could convince even the most rational atheist. But instead, he quoted verses and thumped the Bible on their tables.
Even if one agrees with the core message, one must be completely baffled by his arguments and his contrarianism/antagonism.
Anything from this would do: "Do you want me to carry wood and metal back and forth or do you want me to bring your boys back in one piece?" "Do you want the lightest, fastest medic or do you want a heavy gun-toter who can shoot? You have many of the latter, don't you want one from the former?" "When our soldiers are wounded on the field, would you want me to have a backload of morphine, needles, bandages or do you want me to say 'sorry, boys, I'm out. But at least I have ammo and a gun. Would you like a cartridge?' "
Oh well.