***TRIGGER WARNING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ANTI-SEMITISM AND MEL GIBSON***
The U.S. loves its war movies, there's no disputing that. There are classic American war films from before World War II with "All Quiet on the Western Front." In 1998, "Saving Private Ryan" revolutionized the war film, taking the Greatest War and demystifying it, which set the table for a slew of more war movies in the 2000s, many of them directed by Clint Eastwood, and especially about WWII, including "We Were Soldiers" starring, of all people, Mel Gibson. It's only been two years since the last war film was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and that was "American Sniper" from 2014.
So, a good war yarn is nothing new to American audiences, and "Hacksaw Ridge" makes for a rather uneven effort from director and war movie vet Gibson. No doubt it has its high points, yet also often feels rather unnecessary at times. Still, the idea of a soldier in WWII choosing not to carry a weapon and saving dozens of wounded men armed only with his bravery is an incredible feat and an amazing story.
Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) was a Seventh-Day Adventist (and was in real life as well), who was a pacifist. During WWII, he was drafted into the military, and instead of getting a deferment, as he would have been able to, he decided to serve in the Army as a medic. His father, Tom (Hugo Weaving) is a drunk, which makes for a tumultuous home life. This is largely the first half of the movie, and almost acts as an extended backstory.
Then, of course, he enters boot camp, and as as in any war movie, runs into a colorful cast of characters, some of whom are not happy about Desmond's choice to not carry a gun. Especially unhappy is perpetually angry drill sergeant Vince Vaughn. Of course the sergeant has his own name, but no one would confuse him for anyone but Vince Vaughn playing a typically angry, insulting drill sergeant. That's not totally fair, Vaughn is entertaining in the role, but he's no Lee Ermey, and no one ever will be.
Anyway, Desmond is beset by his refusal to carry a weapon because his commanding officers believe it will inhibit his ability to protect his fellow soldiers, which for all intents and purposes is his sole job, since he will be a medic. But as movie magic goes, of course he eventually makes his way through boot camp, and he's off to Okinawa, where the real excitement will happen.
As Desmond's home life and boot camp make up the first half of the movie, it feels largely uneventful and a bit long. There have been enough war movies that this is paint-by-numbers by now and has often been told more creatively. The selling point of the movie is Desmond's pacifist nature, so the first half of the movie sets up Desmond's character to act on his unique calling in the second half and so a setup is needed. It's just that everyone in the audience knows the guy will get to go be a soldier. Yes, Desmond does meet a woman whom he marries and he has fellow soldiers who get introduced, but all of these secondary characters have so little impact on the film that they mostly get lost. At boot camp, Desmond feels too much like a more capable version of Pvt. Gomer Pyle, a la "Full Metal Jacket," but without the oppressively dark comedic side, that it's hard to get too invested, especially when the outcome seems so obvious. It doesn't make for much drama or interest, and there isn't really any new wrinkle in this typical inspirational story. With the second half being almost entirely action, the first half feels like padding to even out the film, which could use a trim. Maybe it's an attempt to make the movie feel more "epic," but if there's any movie to show that long and epic are not complete synonyms, it's this one.
The film is named for the soldiers' nickname for the Maeda Escarpment, a 350-foot-high "ridge" which was all that stood between the U.S. and control of the island of Okinawa, which would be a massive blow to the Japanese military. Unfortunately for the U.S., the Japanese soldiers want their say in how the war will play out, and they are also ready to fight.
And fight they do. This is where the film shines, as it's a very impressive, harrowing, yet exhilarating vision of dirty, gritty WWII combat that simply has more impact than many other movies about the same subject. It feels different enough from "Saving Private Ryan's" equally impressive Normandy Beach scene and serves a different purpose, that this serves as "Hacksaw's" reason for being. It's so visceral and immediate that it really feels like the viewer on the battlefield, to turn a cliche. But it's violent and gory and disturbing enough that the supposed feeling of the "thrill of battle" isn't so overt that it becomes a celebration of war and violence, at least not always. Unfortunately, Desmond's fellow soldiers weren't provided much development in the first half of the movie that there's no real emotional attachment when most of them get mow down by Japanese machine gun fire and other demented war contraptions. But rest assured, nearly all of them do die and brutally so.
Then there's the one guy who uses a human torso, freed from its be-legged body, as a meat shield. That's pure B-movie grade schlock there.
The funny thing about Mel Gibson's directorial catalog up till now is that with this, "Braveheart," "The Passion of the Christ," and "Apocalypto," he's arguably established himself as a new master of contemporary cinematic gore. The horror genre as a whole there days is almost taking itself out of the running, as it seems to be moving toward a more low-budget, D-I-Y style in the vein of classic '70s-style psychological horror, which uses gory moments as punctuation, but not in a sustained fashion like Gibson does in his films. But he also gets away with it in these higher-profile films that get awards consideration and massive box office, not like a watered-down grindhouse style. Just move over, Eli Roth, you're not gonna win this fight.
But the highlight is that once the battle stops, Desmond decides it's time to really go to work. It's thrilling watching him grab wounded soldier after wounded soldier, trying to avoid the patrolling Japanese troops and nearly getting caught every time. It's hard to see how anyone could not be rooting for him.
Not to belittle the real Desmond Doss' (rest his soul) heroic service or his beliefs, but in the movie, his whole thing about just wanting to help his fellow soldiers, but not being willing to commit violence himself rings false. One of his COs, played by Sam Worthington, even tells Desmond that even if he is not willing to kill enemy soldiers, that his job is to support his own fellow soldiers to do just that. It's a conundrum that even Desmond with his regimented belief has no answer for. He had the ability to defer his service, so he didn't have to dodge the draft, and it's not as if he was forced to serve. He even finds himself needing to be saved from Japanese soldiers several times by his fellow men, which makes him seem like a liability in the field, which is the whole reason his COs were concerned about having him on the team. His willingness to go and fetch his fellow solders who are wounded sort of makes up for it, but his pacifism still seems misguided. Eventually, you're almost begging him to pick up a damn gun. But it turns out his reason for not being willing to pick up the gun is personal, as much as it is religious.
Desmond is also highly reminiscent of Gibson's version of Jesus from "The Passion of the Christ," with so much language about him "sacrificing" to "save" his fellow soldiers, and the stuff about hearing God speak to him. The movie almost feels like a Pure Flix movie ("God's Not Dead," for instance), but with a huge budget, a lot more "assholes" (mostly the word, but also the one literal asscrack), and gobs of ridiculously bloody violence.
Hollywood movies have a habit of getting American regional accents wrong. Desmond and his family are from Virginia, yet they and everyone in his hometown sound as if they are from the Deep South. It's a problem that Hollywood seems to share with mainstream news: Normal folk are believed to come from L.A. or New York and eastward, and anyone who lives anywhere in between, with the exception of Chicago, is assumed to be a country bumpkin. If you're going to assume almost everyone in the country is a common peasant or a hillbilly, at least make the effort to get the different country bumpkin accents right. The vast region that comprises the "Midwest" is nowhere near as homogeneous as the movies and the news would lead you to believe.
Movies about the U.S.'s wars have a tendency to demonize its enemies. That's what American soldiers are taught to do in boot camp, so it's difficult to make American war not come off as simple rah-rah patriotism and "the rest of the world can go fuck themselves" type of sentiment. "Hacksaw" mostly seems like it attempts to place its focus solely on Desmond and avoid political messages. Of course, the Japanese were the enemy, and there are lots of "Japs" thrown around in the movie, which is assuredly something American soldiers said a lot during WWII, among much worse things probably. Being politically correct is an afterthought when your people are getting slaughtered en masse. And the Japanese soldiers in the film are relentless and ferocious, as they no doubt were during the war. This was war, and morality in wartime is complicated, and it's understandable to sympathize with American troops. Japan attacked the U.S. first, drawing the U.S. into WWII, so what happened happened.
But there are a few troubling aspects as it pertains to the movie's treatment of the Japanese. One of them is in a conversation between Desmond and Worthington's character, where Worthington asks Desmond if he believes in the Bible. After Desmond's affirmative answer, Worthington says "This is Satan himself we're fighting," referring to the Japanese soldiers. It's assuredly something a CO would have said during WWII, but it's a little irresponsible to just throw that sort of language out in a film today about any minority race or nationality. That's especially true considering Desmond's religious nature and the relationship the U.S. has with Christianity. Calling a people group "Satan," whether it's a literal Satan or a metaphorical one, is pure demonization of those people.
Then, there's the way that, after the U.S. wins their battle in Okinawa and the Japanese have surrendered, a Japanese commander gives a goofy evil smirk before his troop ambushes the Americans with grenades. That makes the Japanese soldiers come across as cartoonish villains, rather than realistic people. And when the opposing commander commits Seppuku, the moment is treated as some holy victory for the forces of good -- the U.S. -- whom the audience is all rooting for. It takes away the sense of war being a neutral thing and all common people suffering equally, and places blame solely on the other side.
The timing of the movie's release is suspect as well. The film was released in late 2016, which would place it in easy Oscar contention (the Academy loves its war movies) for 2017. The ceremony happened to be a mere week after the 75th anniversary of Japanese-American mass internment in the U.S., which was ordered on Feb. 19, 1942. So, it seems like an insensitive time to make a movie calling Japanese "Satan himself," and making them out to be cartoonish villains.
It may or may not have been intentional, but Mel Gibson would make a WWII movie about Okinawa, rather than Germany, as his directorial comeback after alienating himself from most of Hollywood with his publicly circulated anti-Semitic rant to a police officer who eventually arrested him on suspicion of drunk driving. And it makes sense that he would seek to intentionally make a "politically neutral" movie, at least by Americans' point of view.
And then, of course, you can't talk about Gibson without recalling his 2010 domestic violence case, which was just resolved last year with Gibson taking a plea deal, just a couple months before his new movie was to be released. With Gibson's alleged abhorrent behavior, he greatly resembles Desmond's drunk father. Hugo Weaving is impressive in a typically cliched role, and it is a different role for him, as he's most known as a character actor, who just so happens to play many beloved characters in some incredibly popular movies. He hits all the standard notes of the trope but with the added wrinkle of being a parent who had been in a World War of his own, but the original, grittier one, rather than its hyped-up sequel. He makes it clear, in plain language that he had seen some shit, which humanizes him when he does lapse into his abusive behavior. That added characteristic gives the part an extra something that lifts it above mere cliche. But knowing that Gibson's history mirrors that character to some extent makes you wonder if he had a little extra motivation to provide that character a sympathetic angle.
That together with Desmond's character being treated as a sacrificial "savior" of sorts makes all of this seem like Gibson's personal penance or purgatory for his alleged crimes, all of which he mostly denies anyway and does not apologize for, being the alpha-Mel that he is. As fascinating and deserving of respect as Desmond Doss' story is, it's difficult to separate an artist from his art. Gibson almost uses Doss' story as his own human torso meat shield, as the true story is untouchable for criticism. But Gibson has cut his own personal swath of awfulness, which the public is privy to. If you're going to talk about his movies, you have to talk about the baggage he brings with him.
WWII is a well that for Hollywood may never run dry. There is an endless market for movies about the Great War and undoubtedly a treasure trove of interesting heroic stories. Desmond Doss is an amazing case of his own, and it's good to see him get cinematic recognition in "Hacksaw Ridge." But he deserved to have his story told by someone else besides Mel Gibson.