Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
There is a moment in Hacksaw Ridge where a soldier casually picks up half a dismembered torso and uses it as a makeshift shield before sprinting forward and mowing down enemy troops with a light machine gun held in just one hand. I had to pause. I genuinely had to sit back and ask myself whether this was actually the film critics have been tripping over themselves to call one of the most realistic depictions of war in modern cinema. Because from where I was sitting, it looked a lot more like someone had sneaked a Marvel movie into my history lesson.
The hyperbole surrounding this one has been doing my head in. I get that Mel Gibson is a genuinely talented director. Braveheart proved that, and both Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ showed he has a real knack for visceral, committed filmmaking that gets under your skin. So it pains me to say that Hacksaw Ridge is, for most of its runtime, a frustrating mess of tonal contradictions and misplaced ambition. The sort of unadulterated comic-book ridiculousness on display here is something I'd expect from a Tarantino fantasy sequence, not a supposedly grounded account of a real man's extraordinary courage under fire.
The structure is a big part of the problem. You're sitting through well over an hour of boot camp melodrama and domestic squabbling before the film even gets near the battle that gives it its name. That is a long time to ask an audience to wait, and the payoff needs to be something special. Here, it's rushed, chaotic, and stripped of the emotional weight all that setup was presumably trying to build. The pacing just doesn't work. The film spends ages on the slow burn, then abandons it completely the moment the guns come out.
Andrew Garfield in the lead role doesn't help matters. I want to be fair here because the role asks a lot of him, but there's a stiff, glassy-eyed earnestness to his performance that I found very difficult to connect with. He plays the gentle, pacifist medic with such relentless wide-eyed sincerity that it tips into woodenness. The character on paper is a brilliant narrative subject. The real story behind him is extraordinary. But on screen, I never quite felt it.
Now, to be fair, once the combat does kick in, the film becomes a different beast. It's loud, it's visceral, and it is technically proficient in the way you'd expect from a Gibson action sequence. There's genuine chaos and some striking imagery in those battle scenes, and I won't pretend it didn't hold my attention. The second half is undeniably more engaging than the sluggish first. But "more engaging than the boring bit" is hardly a ringing endorsement, and the moment it tips into slow-motion, almost cartoonish gore, any claim to historical authenticity goes straight out the window.
It's telling that this was recommended to me enthusiastically by the same mate who swears by an endless diet of CGI superhero blockbusters. He called it one of the greatest war movies ever made. I cannot see it. Not even close. There are sequences here that feel less grounded than a summer popcorn film, and dressing them up in a real soldier's story doesn't change that. If anything, it makes the excesses feel a little uncomfortable.
What we're left with is a watchable, occasionally striking piece of mainstream filmmaking that will absolutely satisfy anyone after a loud, bloody afternoon at the pictures. Gibson knows how to put a battle sequence together, and on a purely technical level, he delivers. But the film completely undermines its own emotional weight by lurching between sincere historical drama and superhero physics without ever finding a consistent register. Turn your brain off and it's fine. Stack it up against the praise it's received, and it's a genuine letdown.
Two and a half stars.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2016 | Watched: 2026-07-20
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: fuboTV · Angel Studios · Lionsgate+ Amazon Channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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