Film Review - Hacksaw Ridge (15)

Help me get one more.

Mel Gibson is back in the director's chair and he's in brutal, hard-hitting form. If last week's Manchester by the Sea was all frozen emotions, Hacksaw Ridge wears its bloody heart on its sleeve. Love and loss, fear and rage, faith and sacrifice - this film pulses with them from its opening frames. War is hell, and it can strangle a man's better nature - but not, apparently, if your name is Private Desmond Doss.

Hacksaw Ridge tells an obscure story from World War Two history of a Seventh Day Adventist from rural Virginia (played in the film by Andrew Garfield), who wanted to serve as a medic in the US Army, without ever bearing a weapon. Doss's pacifism is a strange fit in the military, subject to wrath and ridicule, but it belies a unique kind of courage. The film's early stages establish the roots of Desmond's beliefs (a war-traumatised father and devout Christian mother) and follow his problematic army training, where a Conscientious Objector with a desire to serve is viewed as bizarre at best, and at its worst deeply offensive. 

How Doss overcomes those prejudices leads us into the dark and violent final act of the film - his platoon's near-suicidal assault on the vertiginous Hacksaw Ridge, during the Battle of Okinawa. The precept of saving life when all others are taking is his guiding light, and the result is an astonishing story of hope and the power of faith amid war's insanity. The phrase 'you wouldn't believe it if it wasn't true' has never been more apt.

Hacksaw Ridge holds two very distinct styles of film in tension. The early scenes - Doss's rough-and-tumble family life, his romance with an Army nurse, even aspects of his training - have an old-fashioned Hollywood quality to them, replete with moments of sweetness and humour. When the clash of war occurs, however, it does so with a ferocity unsurpassed even in the likes of Saving Private Ryan or Gibson's own Braveheart. The violence is vivid and unsparing - visceral in a very literal way - and the terror of its combatants on both sides is tangible. The shocking power of these sequences, however, only serves to highlight the humanity and valour of the film's hero.

As Doss, Garfield is simply superb, portraying the lad as a guileless romantic early on and then quietly revealing the depth of his conviction, as it comes under all manner of attack. His army comrades are sufficiently sketched for us to care about them when they are plunged into battle and Vince Vaughn conveys harsh wit with a hint of compassion as the platoon's drill sergeant. There's complexity too in Doss's father - pain amid his sometimes abusive anger - as played by Hugo Weaving. 

This film will be remembered, however, for it portrayal of compassion amid stunningly realised carnage. Hacksaw Ridge never succeeds in resolving the moral contradiction between Doss's version of pacifism and the bloodier form of bravery shown by his fellow-soldiers, nor could it. What it does, however, is celebrate one man's commitment to his principles, and remind us that courage comes in some unusual guises.

Mel Gibson remains a complex and controversial figure. For this movie, however, he deserves a firm handshake.