One of the Most Horrifying Depictions of War

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2017)

Hacksaw Ridge is a movie very neatly divided, and each section is better than the last. The first act is all introductions and character building. We meet a young Desmond Doss and his brother, including a near-fatal scuffle between them, sowing the seeds of Desmond's stubborn anti-violence stance. We establish that their father is an abusive drunk, haunted by the horrors of World War One. Desmond grows up, shows an early sense of heroism, and meets his beloved in a whirling romance, before he decides it's time he went and helped defend his country. This opening section is weak, to put it bluntly. It's kind of boring, very cheesy, and mirrors classic Hollywood quite a lot (and in more than just costumes and hair-styling). It has it's high points for sure, but I was almost ready to chuck this movie under the bus at this point. Hugo Weaving single-handedly manages to keep this act engaging. In the hands of a lesser actor, the role could've easily drifted into cliché abusive father tropes, but Weaving manages to tap into the trauma behind the abuse and make him a sympathetic figure. His breakdown at the table when Desmond's brother appears in military garb is heartbreaking.
The second act shifts to the military training camp where Doss has to defend his anti- violence beliefs and convince his superiors not to force him out. This fight of faith is quite engaging to go through, and we get a real sense of who Desmond is, the lengths he will go to to stand for that, and the inner turmoil it creates for him. We also meet his comrades, including arsehole Smitty, pretty boy Hollywood, lassoing Tex, lanky Ghoul, and his various superiors. This is where the film picks up in entertainment value thanks in large part to Vince Vaughn's stern but comedic drill sergeant, but it doesn't entirely lose it's classics sheen of cheese, and is brought down a little by some cringe-worthy lines of dialogue.
But the third act, which really encompasses the second half of the movie, is when Hacksaw Ridge shows it's hand and goes balls-to-the-wall. This is when Doss and his company are dispatched to Okinawa and are tasked with taking the titular ridge from the Japanese and holding it for long enough to get a foothold on the island. From the very first moments that the men clamber over the top of the cliff-edge, the tone of the movie completely changes. The land is desolate and strewn in corpses and body parts. The tension is amped up to eleven as the men slowly traverse the unforgiving landscape. The movie shifts almost into the horror genre, with jump-scares and a whole heap of gore and injury detail, and the cheesy melodrama of the first two acts suddenly makes sense; getting the audience into a false sense of security.
I honestly cannot state enough how unsettlingly gory the second half of this movie is. It doesn't hold back in it's depiction of war. The first time they reach the ridge, and they traverse the corpse-strewn landscape, we see everything from decapitated heads, maggot-infested corpses, intestines and other internal organs splayed over rocks and trees. We're put right into the men's shoes, as their happy existence is suddenly and utterly shattered by the realism of their situation. Then a half-dead torso sits up and screams and all hell breaks loose. Soldiers are literally torn apart by a hail of bullets, blood, bone, and organs litter the ground, grenades and mortars explode every which way. The rate at which the movie goes from cheesy melodrama to horrific realism is like flicking a switch.
It's only after this initial, harrowing assault on the ridge that the true purpose of the movie starts to rear it's head. As every surviving soldier retreats down the cliff edge back to safety, Doss is the only man who willingly remains on top, and he spends the better part of two days alone, retrieving and patching up injured soldiers left behind, and lowering them down to the beach below. He dodges detection by the Japanese at every turn, and uses every creative idea he has to make sure no-one else dies. He even helps patch up and save a few Japanese soldiers as well. The kicker is that all of this is entirely true, it happened. The real Doss saved over seventy-five soldiers in those two days alone. It's almost unbelievable, to the point where it must have been glorified or exaggerated in some way, but in fact Gibson actually cut out certain heroic acts fearing audiences wouldn't buy into them. Could Hacksaw Ridge really be the first movie based on a true story that actually had to dull down it's realism to make it more believable?!
Hacksaw Ridge is definitely a movie I would recommend, despite it's opening shortcomings. It pains me to say it, but I'd have liked less backstory. Maybe start the story at the military training camp, and revisit his childhood and courting in flashbacks, or maybe just cut out the romance entirely (it's ultimately unimportant). Despite it's flaws at the beginning, the second half notches the movie up dramatically and completely flipped my opinion of the entire movie. It's a difficult watch, wrought with tension, adrenaline rushes, and disturbing imagery, but it really places you in the battle, and frames Desmond's heroism in an unparalleled way; even amongst all this horror, he never loses faith, he never loses courage, he never gives up and never quits. It's truly inspiring. I give Hacksaw Ridge a very good 8/10 (the second half is a solid 9, the first middling around a 6).