Incredible story, poor movie.

Rating: 2/10 (31 January 2017)

The True Story of Desmond Doss is incredible. It's a story that genuinely deserves a wider audience. However what Mel Gibson does, is create a misty eyed, all American first act; and a second act that concentrates more on jump scares and gore than actual crafted, intelligent film-making. This could have been epic. But it wasn't. It was full of lazy romanticism, war clichés, absolutely awful dialogue and Vince Vaughn. It's such a shame because it truly is an incredible tale. But when you hear the likes of:
"You gotta be kiddin' me"; "We gat company!"; "Let's go to work boys"
And other such tired dialogue it rather ruins any tension or seriousness of the fraught situation we've just experienced. Some of the goofy lines and sequences were close to feeling that they were actually parodying other war movies. The end battle sequence is also ridiculous, and yes I know Desmond Doss really kicked a grenade out of the way in battle but this does not mean that the way Mel Gibson recreated it (which looked like a 'slo-mo' of a Soccer player scoring a goal in the world cup Final) was in any way captivating or entertaining and actually just made me laugh out loud. As did several other bits.
It could have been such a delve into one of the most remarkable men to ever go to war. Instead it just resembled Captain America in a US Army uniform for an hour. Despite some nice photography it is a wasted opportunity. Lovers of Michael Bay and/or superhero flicks may like this movie. I didn't. 5/10