>Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge is much more than a war movie. Titled after the 1945 Battle of Okinawa on the Japanese bluff known as Hacksaw Ridge, it tells the true-life story of Desmond Doss, a religious conscientious objector who nevertheless saved dozens of fellow soldiers’ lives while serving as a battlefield medic during the final days of World War II. Doss received a Medal of Honor from President Truman, but, ironically, the movie is the work of a famously Christian filmmaker who was publicly excoriated by the mainstream (i.e., secular) media, which lashed out against his 2004 The Passion of the Christ (discussed in my 2014 NRO article “The Year the Culture Broke”).
>With Hacksaw Ridge, Gibson openly responds to what has now become a routine character-assassination attempt by the media; he envisions the Battle of Okinawa as a test of morality and religious faith. Doss, a Virginia-born Seventh-day Adventist (portrayed by Andrew Garfield), claimed conscientious-objector status based on his personal Christian pacifism. Gibson shows how that pacifism derived from Doss’s background: Having grown up as a violence-addicted son of a bitterly traumatized WWI veteran (Hugo Weaving), Doss as an adult becomes a devout pacifist who clashes with military tradition to win his right to service. What he encountered in fulfilling his faith and duty is movingly depicted in the film, but it’s the emotional undercurrent that makes Hacksaw Ridge extraordinary.
>Gibson disposes of the “anti-war film” cliché with a full-throttle War Is Hell scenario. His scenes of carnage and savagery have nearly surreal intensity. The black-gray, smoke-and-flames imagery of rugged terrain, bodies charred and mutilated in deadly piles, plus head-banging artillery noises and painful human howls express fascination and revulsion. It is a conscientiously masculine vision — male aggression chastened by a sense of horror. Obviously, this is not documentary horror remembered from actual wartime experience. Rather, Gibson vents the ambivalence he probably acquired as a thinking macho (being both a star of violent ’80s and ’90s spectacles and a perceptive, ambitious artiste). Hacksaw Ridge is sensitized by a wounded man’s humility and a thinking man’s sincerity. Thus, the film’s vision of Hell on Earth has peculiar authority.
>It’s clear that Gibson is fully conscious of man’s inhumanity to man, maybe more than anyone else in Hollywood. He didn’t have to actually participate in combat to learn about human savagery; the mainstream media taught him that. But alongside the film’s dramatization of Doss’s family life and his courtship of Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), the lovely, bold-spirited nurse he married, Hacksaw Ridge anatomizes military aggression and its complex links to masculine character. Garfield’s Doss uncannily recalls Anthony Perkins’s pacifist performance in Friendly Persuasion. Other, variously wounded American GIs are memorably etched by Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, and Luke Bracey as men who sacrifice themselves while dealing with personal issues. (These conflicts are fleetly dramatized by screenwriters Robert Schenkken and Andrew Knight.)
Nolan Moore
Poor White. He can't even complain about dumb modern critics and millennials because they also liked the film.
Eli Ramirez
>Hacksaw Ridge provides a long-awaited cultural rejoinder to the violence in Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s culture-shaking tribute to WWII martyrdom. But Spielberg’s film needn’t be the definitive WWII movie, and neither should Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Clint Eastwood’s diptych Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jimo, or Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Gibson forsakes the self-righteousness of those films and provides the substance — the reproof of violence — absent from all those movies that are so shamelessly geeked-up by the boyish excitement of fighting and death. (Doss’s father complains that his mother teaches “the world is a soft and gentle place” while he also upbraids his son’s timidity: “You’ve got to sit and think and pray about everything. Look at you!”) The original Mad Max finally grows up when Doss daringly rescues wounded Americans from the Japanese onslaught: “Please, God, help me get one more.”
>It’s odd to see a contemporary film that depicts war without partisan second-guessing or political rebuke. Hacksaw Ridge has a patriotic valiance and dauntless candor that recall Sergeant York, the 1941 Gary Cooper film. But that was from a different era, less hostile to the idea of American military effort. Gibson defies today’s secular hostility by proffering Doss’s principled certitude.
Benjamin Allen
>Hacksaw Ridge is not an official history of WWII; its visionary, emotional force recalls the essence of cinematic heroism. Gibson’s battle scenes evoke D. W. Griffith’s great “War’s Peace” tableau in The Birth of a Nation and turns its sorrow, sarcasm, and heartfelt pacifism into a War Is Hell epic. A montage contrasting Japanese seppuku with American faith is even-handed history and spiritually profound. For thoughtful viewers, Hacksaw Ridge will loom larger than Doss’s story; it’s also Gibson’s personal Hell on Earth reprisal to the war on his Christian convictions.
Liam Collins
>was publicly excoriated by the mainstream (i.e., secular) media
very sneaky way of saying it without saying it
James Davis
armond white is the best, and I say this as a jew
Jayden Davis
He might as well have said (((secular))).
Joseph Young
>Americans think they know anything about WW2 Cute.
Jaxon Bailey
It's a dead giveaway when a shitposter shits on Mr. White.
Brandon Thompson
So he liked it?
Brandon Phillips
Yes, but his review is very much unbiased and compares to other films of similar narrative/plot/premise
Benjamin Johnson
This is why we need flags on Sup Forums. This is probably some leaf who's WWII experience was holding down towns already taken back by America.
Dylan Gray
You really think some 90 year old would post here?
Dominic Russell
Well we did win it, and then rebuilt europe.
Ethan Jackson
>Well we did win it yeah, thanks for providing the resources. That was USA's involvement in WW2.
Brandon Torres
>media lashed out against his passion of the Christ I don't think making the highest grossing R rated movie of all time, talked about positively in most media outlets was what blacklisted Mel. I feel like it was the whole Jews, sugar tits, raped by a pack of niggers thing.
Leo Peterson
He financed the movie himself. (((They))) were pissed that they didn't get their cut. See when he re-released the second cut that was unrated and none of the corporate theaters showed it.
Jack Miller
So in short he liked it, but he would love it even more if everyone else hated it?
Never change Armond lmao.
Chase Scott
The Pacific theater was all American and flips, but still a primarily American affair.
I'll give you yurop though. That was definitely the brits battle and russian farmers.
Caleb Reed
Britain did contribute in ladyboy Asia though.
Hunter Lee
>This is why we need flags on Sup Forums To get more nationalistic and bottom of the barrel insults? Kindly fuck off back to Sup Forums, you waste of space
Noah Gray
Looks like someone is upset. Say it.
Robert Morris
K I N G O F / T V / I N G
O F
/ T V /
Benjamin Clark
Can he get any more based.
Chase Perry
>papa New Guinea campaign
Wow thanks Britain so much help
Owen Rodriguez
>mfw most of Sup Forums ignore his Neon Demon review
Gabriel Jones
This man embodies Sup Forums. He hates capeshit aswell, doesn't he?
Cameron Morales
he hates bad capeshit, he loved all of DCEU's stuff so far.
Andrew Cruz
This is the godking of Sup Forums
Chase Long
>playing down europe >meanwhile yanks fought an enemy who killed themselves regularly
Isaac Lopez
he ripped into it, like he should. refn is a hack
Adrian Anderson
OUR
GUY
John Cruz
>we How old are you?
Landon Anderson
I thought he didn't like SS, must have forgotten what he wrote about it
Daniel Morales
>black and gay >also conservative How?
Carter Price
>White >is black The man takes contrarianism very seriously.
Connor Sanders
He thought it was OK but that it had missed opportunities and an identity crisis. Spent most of his review BTFO marvelfags >If DC is the conservative comic-book universe to Marvel’s pseudo-progressivism, it couldn’t be more unpopular among kids who enjoyed the ludicrous platitudes of Avengers: Age of Ultron. And DC couldn’t have a better leader than Snyder, who even gives supervillains a human scale.
Jonathan Nguyen
Conservatives dont hate blacks, or gays. Try getting some information outside of a liberal bubble
Kevin Cooper
>being a gaynigger lover
Wyatt Thompson
Those are cuckservatives.
Nathaniel Martinez
do you?
Jordan Taylor
Is this movie anything like We Were Soldiers? Because that was an incomprehensibly bad piece of shit.
Ian Hughes
>but Armond is a contrarian >he can't like a critically and audience acclaimed film
Sup Forums BTFO
Austin Williams
He liked Kubo and The Lego Movie, both were critically acclaimed
John Howard
you mean plebbitors BTFO?
Ryan Ramirez
probably a brazilian or indian
Ethan Price
Are you implying people posting on Sup Forums have WWII experience? Or are you just trying to take credit for something you didn't do?
Aaron Anderson
>contrarian. Only butthurt capeshit fanboys say this.
He has liked plenty of popular movies. Like classic spielberg films, terrence malick, the fighter(basically all of david O. Rusell films). Some of Wes andersom films, etc.
He is just beyond pleb millenials shit taste.
Isaac Wood
Please note that this is the same guy who thought Transformers 2 was good.
Tyler Gomez
>David O. Rusell >Wes Anderson >Spielberg >beyond pleb millenials shit taste
