Based on a true story, this biographical war drama about World War II received six nominations at the 89th academy awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Sound Editing. It won the awards for sound mixing and best film editing. Directed by Mel Gibson and written by Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan, Hacksaw Ridge portrays the story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for courage under fire, for his bravery as a medic during the battle of Okinawa, in 1945.
Country boy Desmond (Andrew Garfield), a Seventh-Day Adventist (A protestant Christian denomination) from Virginia, gets enlisted in the Army as a combat medic. Desmond’s father Tom (Hugo Weaving), a troubled, alcoholic World War I veteran gets upset with Desmond’s decision to go to the war as he lost three of his best friends in war. Before leaving for Fort Jackson Desmond proposes to Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), which she accepts. Due to Desmond’s strick adherence to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” he refused not only to fight but even to touch a firearm or weapons of any kind. Labelled a conscientious objector, he prefers to call himself a “conscientious cooperator” because, as an enlistee, he is devoted to serving the U.S. war effort, albeit by saving lives rather than taking them.
“While everybody else is taking life, I’m going to be saving it. With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me to wanna put a little bit of it back together,” says Desmond.
He gets Punished by Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn) and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington), mocked and beaten by the other fellow soldiers, even gets subjected to a court-martial. But the charges are eventually dropped. When they are given the task of ascending and securing Maeda Escarpment aka Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond saves 75 wounded soldiers single-handedly without any use of firearms. With reinforcements, they turn the tide of the battle. This unbelievable effort by Desmond helps them to secure Hacksaw from the Japanese. In the end parts of the movie there are clips of the real Desmond Doss from an old documentary where he states what was going on in his mind at that time.
He says, “I was praying the whole time, I was praying Lord please help me to get one more, when I got this, I prayed Lord please help me to get one more.”
The scandal ridden director may not have produced his best but the film certainly has enough merit to get included among Mel Gibson’s finest direction. With the explicit violence showing the brutality of a real war, the story can be overwhelming at times. Andrew Garfield emerged as a refreshing actor with mature and heart-touching performance which does justice to the role. However, Vince Vaughn’s portrayal of Sergeant Howell appears less than convincing. The cinematography by Simon Duggan is strong and the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams goes perfectly with the story.
Hacksaw Ridge was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of its top ten Movies of the Year 2016.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
