First rate true story

Rating: 9/10 (15 May 2018)

Desmond Doss joins the US Army after Pearl Harbour, but refuses to touch guns. But he sees combat in Okinawa as a medic, and perhaps he isn't the coward his fellow recruits assumed he was.
Mel Gibson directs this dramatisation of Desmond Doss' early life and army experiences, culminating in his experiences at Okinawa. These turn out to be utterly extraordinary, except that the real-life Doss and some of his contemporaries appear at the end of the film to drive home that this is actually all true.
The first section of the film shows Doss' troubled home life (with a superb performance by Hugo Weaving as his war-torn disciplinarian father), followed by boot camp and the opprobrium he attracts as a conscientious objector, leading to a Court Martial, where salvation comes from an unexpected direction. Though lengthy, it always engages.
Among the extensive supporting cast, I would single out a luminously lovely Teresa Palmer as Doss' love interest, and Vince Vaughan as boot camp Sergeant Howell, showing that he actually can act.
But Andrew Garfield simply IS the gentle but steely Desmond Doss in a performance which blends gentleness and strength with religious conviction and a joy for life. Garfield has always been good, but here is a performance of genuine stature.
The combat sequences which occupy the final third of the film show what a good director Gibson is, especially with action. They give a very strong impression - feeling, even - of what it must have been like to have death screaming down at you without any idea that it would ever abate. This section is often schockingly graphic: think Saving Private Ryan, only more so. And like, I guess, reality, the shock begins to wear off and all that's left is violence, weariness, and grief at the loss of friends.
While being clearly anti-war, this is also done entertainingly well, a contradiction which concerns me somewhat. But before the "war as entertainment" vs "anti-war message" battle breaks into fisticuffs, Doss' achievements start to come to the fore, and mightily overpower everything else.
Though strong in content and, perhaps, containing elements which mirror Gibson's own rocky road in recent years, this is an excellent and worthwhile film.