Mel Gibson’s directing career has been on hiatus for a decade, as the onetime superstar recovered from some career-chilling offscreen outbursts.
This interval has been hard on manufacturers of fake blood.
From “Braveheart” to “The Passion of the Christ” to “Apocalypto,” Gibson’s films as director have rained down gore. His interest in bodily harm has not waned, as “Hacksaw Ridge” demonstrates.
It remains to be seen whether Gibson’s acting career will ever re-ignite, but he’s a safe bet as a director. Despite its intense violence, “Hacksaw Ridge” is skillful and emotionally potent, if maybe a little unresolved about what it’s saying.
The film is based on a remarkable real person: Desmond Doss, a Virginia man who enlisted in the Army for World War II but who simultaneously declared his status as a conscientious objector because of his religious beliefs.
Doss refused to carry or shoot a gun. Instead, he became a medic, and his bravery during the battle of Okinawa in 1945 earned him the Medal of Honor.
Gibson, working from a script by Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan, splits the story in two. Part One is Doss’s young life, with Andrew Garfield doing his best aw-shucks routine as the peace-loving Desmond.
Hugo Weaving and Rachel Griffiths play Desmond’s parents, a shell-shocked WWI veteran and long-suffering wife, respectively. Desmond meets his future bride Dorothy (Teresa Palmer) when he gives blood at a hospital. In case you’re wondering, yes, Gibson lingers in close-up over the puncturing of a vein for donating blood — I guess he’s warning the audience about the carnage to come.
The second half is a war movie, an unrelieved set of grisly encounters with Japanese soldiers. The action unfolds in the same washed-out look, so it gets a little monotonous, but Gibson’s shrewd sense of where the emotional beats are located carries the story through to its end.
In the basic-training section, where Doss is abused by his fellow soldiers — lots of echoes of “From Here to Eternity” here — Gibson sets up the mixed-platoon format familiar from countless war movies (there’s the Italian-American, the country boy, the bully, etc.). He doesn’t expand much on the outline, as though impatient to get to the battle.
There, we lose most of the characterizations to the bloodshed. Exceptions include Doss’ sergeant (Vince Vaughn, a little modern for WWII) and skeptical captain (Sam Worthington—Gibson seems to have employed half the actors in Australia).
Mel Gibson’s interest in martyrs is fully engaged here, as Doss proves that an anti-violence stance does not contradict one’s courage or love of country. The movie hits that irony hard. Yes, Gibson can tell a story, and grown men will weep at this one — but I genuinely wonder how many pacifists it will create?
“Hacksaw Ridge” (2 1/2 stars)
Mel Gibson directs the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a pacifist who refused to carry a gun in battle but won the Medal of Honor as a medic at Okinawa. The film’s intense violence makes it a rough go, and Gibson isn’t one for nuance. But the emotional beats are big and shrewd—grown men will cry. With Vince Vaughn, Teresa Palmer.
Rating: R, for violence, language
Showing: Friday Nov. 4 at Alderwood Mall, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Everett Stadium, Marysville, Meridian, Sundance Cinemas, Thornton Place Stadium, Woodinville, Cascade Mall.
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