Hacksaw Ridge 2016
This movie, directed by Mel Gibson, got a lot of raves when it came out but it was not something I felt like I needed to see. I recorded it when it came on cable and finally got around to watching it. Unfortunately a lot of the movie is by the numbers and it is kind of painful to watch the part with Desmond Doss growing up because it is so stereotypical. The battle scenes all take place on Okinawa during a couple of days even though in real life Doss had already been in two other battles and he actually served on Okinawa for a few weeks. It threw me off a bit because he enlists close to the beginning of the war, trains, and all of the sudden he is walking off the boat into the last major battle of the Pacific.
In some ways his real life story is even more amazing, while in other ways, they have concentrated all of the highlights into this one prolonged battle. While it is amazing what he did and he certainly deserved the Congressional Medal of Honor that he received for his actions, the story itself is pretty simple. It might have been told better by a documentary rather than a dramatic movie. It also bothered me that Doss is played by Andrew Garfield, who is British, and his father was played by an Australian. Their accents seemed off and Garfield’s delivery was uneven. All of that said, the story is worth watching, but I can’t give the movie more than a B.
Written: 23 Feb 2018