Moving But Bloody

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2016)

I saw "Hacksaw Ridge", starring Andrew Garfield-the Amazing Spider-Man movies, Lions For Lambs; Teresa Palmer-Lights Out, The Sorcerer's Apprentice; Sam Worthington-Everest, Avatar and Vince Vaughn-The Internship, Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
This is a WW2 movie directed by Mel Gibson and is based on the true story of Desmond Doss, a 7th Day Adventist that was the first conscientious objector in American history to receive the Medal of Honor. It was filmed in Australia-I guess Mel likes filming in his home country-and centers on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. Andrew plays Desmond, who enlisted in the Army because he just wanted to serve his country, but not have to kill anyone. He wanted to be a medic and wanted to save lives but he would not carry a gun. Teresa is his girlfriend back in Virginia-they eventually married-and Andrew even went through a court martial because he refused to carry a weapon. Sam plays his Captain and Vince is his Sergeant, who along with just about everybody else, thought Andrew was just a plain old coward for not carrying a gun. The battle scenes are pretty graphic and grisly. Remember the opening of Saving Private Ryan? The last half of the movie is like that one scene, only amp-ed up. The scenes of Andrew rescuing the wounded soldiers are very heroic and it's estimated that he rescued somewhere around 75 men. As the end credits start, you get to hear from the actual people that survived, including Desmond Doss, and what happened to them afterwards. It is a bloody but moving story. It's rated "R" for graphic war violence and grisly, bloody images and has a running time of 2 hours & 11 minutes. I would buy this one on DVD.