Decent flick, Great leads. Terrible choice of CGI

Rating: 4/10 (20 February 2017)

War movies need to be violent, they need to show the brutality and suffering one faces in a war zone. However, at the beginning of the first battle in 'Hacksaw Ridge', we see 2 men shot through the faces with CGI bullets, their heads explode, and it honestly looks like a scene from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". The war scenes would have been 10 times more effective if Gibson and his crew eliminated the use of Computer generated blood and gore. Every time a CGI blood burst was on screen, I was taken out of the film. It looked like a cartoon, which is a shame, because there are also scenes where stunt-people have clearly been set aflame and the production utilises truly realistic practical gore.
Besides this complaint, the film is entertaining and keeps your attention. I am by no means religious, and the trailers for this film looked preachy and corny. Yet by the end of this film I felt nothing but admiration and genuine respect for Doss and his accomplishments.
The first half of this film is almost as corny as a lifetime film, yet the acting by Garfield, Palmer and Weaving is so pitch-perfect, that I couldn't help but get sucked in to their personal conflicts. Garfield and Palmers relationship in any other film would be sickly sweet, but they are so believable and likable it somehow is the best element in the movie. Where the film loses points is in it's supporting cast, primarily the bland, uninteresting soldier characters who even in their most emotional scenes, are dull and forgettable. Vaughn is miscast as the Sergeant, and Sam Worthington's US accent kept slipping. There were several green-screen shots, especially towards the beginning, where the boys were on top of the rock ledge, that were embarrassingly obvious, and the acting by the kids was not much better.
While this film was certainly entertaining, it doesn't get anywhere near the heights of war classics like "Saving Private Ryan", "Paths of Glory" or even "Full Metal Jacket" or "Jarhead". If I had to choose a contemporary war film 'Hacksaw Ridge' was equal to, it would coincidentally be Gibson's "We Were Soldiers", both are entertaining and have some shocking scenes, but neither have the impact a truly good movie has.
All-in-all, Hacksaw Ridge is an entertaining film. It is as if Hallmark hired Mel Gibson to make a lifetime movie. I like Gibson as a director, but 'Hacksaw' does not reach the thrilling heights of "Apocalypto", or the quotability and memorability of "Braveheart".
Give it a watch, but don't expect a modern masterpiece. The current ranking on IMDb is bafflingly over-the-top