Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Desmond T. Doss was a Seventh-day Adventist from Lynchburg, Virginia, who served as a combat medic with the 77th Infantry Division during the Second World War. He refused on religious grounds to carry a weapon, endured sustained harassment from fellow soldiers and the military establishment alike, and then, during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, single-handedly rescued 75 wounded men from the top of the Maeda Escarpment, lowering them one by one over the cliff edge while under enemy fire. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first conscientious objector in American history to receive it. The story sat quietly in the historical record for decades, the subject of a 2004 documentary, before Mel Gibson brought it to the big screen in 2016, co-produced across several studios including Summit Entertainment and Cross Creek Pictures, with principal photography taking place in New South Wales, Australia. Given the scale of the battle sequences and the period reconstruction involved, it was a substantial production by any measure.
Gibson returning to the director's chair was itself a news story. His previous films behind the camera, including Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ, and Apocalypto, had each attracted both awards attention and controversy in roughly equal measure, and his personal conduct in the intervening years had kept him largely off Hollywood's preferred guest list. Hacksaw Ridge was, by most accounts, a deliberate rehabilitation project as much as a passion-driven one, and the resulting film carries that dual ambition in every frame. It arrived to strong box office returns and considerable awards traction, including a Best Director nomination for Gibson at the Academy Awards. Andrew Garfield, best known to mainstream audiences from his stint as Spider-Man, takes the lead role of Doss, surrounded by a cast that includes Sam Worthington (see also his early career gamble in Terminator Salvation), Teresa Palmer as Doss's wife Dorothy, Luke Bracey as a combative fellow soldier, and Vince Vaughn in a rather straight-faced turn as the unit's sergeant, a long way from the broad comedy of DodgeBall or Old School. Vaughn, for what it is worth, acquits himself reasonably well in the dramatic register, even if the casting still reads as slightly eccentric on paper. The film runs just over two hours and nineteen minutes in some cuts, though the theatrical version sits at 139 minutes, which is still a considerable commitment from the audience before anyone fires a shot in anger.
There is a moment in Mel Gibson’s 2016 war epic Hacksaw Ridge where a soldier casually picks up half a dismembered torso to use as a makeshift shield, before sprinting forward and mowing down enemy troops with a light machine gun held in just one hand. I genuinely had to pause and ask myself if we were watching the same film that critics have been heralding as the "one of the most realistic depiction of war" in modern cinema.
Honestly, it’s the sort of unadulterated, comic-book ridiculousness that even Quentin Tarantino would have raised an eyebrow at during the filming of Inglourious Basterds. When your supposedly grounded historical drama starts leaning harder into superhero physics than a Marvel movie, I just knew I wasn't going to enjoy this.
This bizarre tonal clash is compounded by a pacing structure that feels like a bit of a mess. The picture clocks in at a hefty two hours, yet we don’t actually get to the titular battle until well past the halfway mark. That makes for an incredibly long, drawn-out buildup to what is essentially a relatively rushed, chaotic third act. I know the incredible true story behind Desmond Doss, and on paper, it’s a brilliant narrative. But the first hour is bogged down in tedious boot camp melodrama and domestic squabbles, anchored by Andrew Garfield, who I have to say, feels incredibly wooden in the lead role. He plays the gentle, pacifist medic with a stiff, unblinking earnestness that just fails to connect on an emotional level.
It’s no surprise, then, that the film was highly recommended to me by a mate who also swears by the endless flood of CGI superhero slop, calling it one of the greatest war movies ever made. I really cannot see it. Once the combat finally kicks in, the film abandons any pretence of historical authenticity and goes full throttle into hyper-kinetic, slow-motion gore. To be fair, the second half is undeniably more engaging than the sluggish first act. The combat sequences are loud, visceral, and technically proficient, doing exactly what you’d expect from a Gibson-directed battle scene. It’s "fine" for the genre, delivering the requisite explosions and tragic heroics.
But "fine" and "one of the best war movies ever" are two very different things, and the sheer hyperbole surrounding this release is deeply frustrating. Gibson has delivered a watchable, visually striking piece of mainstream cinema that will absolutely satisfy those looking for a loud, bloody afternoon at the pictures. Yet, by sacrificing narrative pacing and historical grounding for sensationalised, almost cartoonish action set pieces, it completely undermines its own emotional core. It’s a decent enough spectacle if you turn your brain off, but as a profound cinematic achievement, it’s a massive letdown for me.
Hacksaw Ridge occupies a curious position in the broader conversation about war cinema. It is polished but unremarkable in the ways that matter most, arriving dressed in the language of solemnity and historical weight while often behaving like something altogether louder and less disciplined. Gibson has always been a director who favours physical and emotional extremity, sometimes to electrifying effect, and there is an audience for whom this film will land exactly as intended. But Doss's story is, by any measure, genuinely extraordinary, and the question of whether the film does justice to that record is one worth sitting with long after the credits roll. A man who saved 75 lives without raising a weapon deserved, perhaps, a film that trusted the quiet power of that fact a little more. Real heroism rarely needs slow motion.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2016 | Watched: 2026-07-20
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Hacksaw Ridge (2016) on YouTube
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