Review of Hacksaw Ridge (2016) by Nedryerson1 — 23 Jan 2017

Hacksaw Ridge is the new adventure of Mel Gilson on epic cinema. The film is about a soldier that refuses to carry a weapon, the fight for his decision and its display at war. Like his previous works, we face an event in history of humankind, but from the point of view of one single individual.

The focus for the protagonist is something characteristic in Gibson’s movies; the evaluation of human character at its daily basis, because the human concept has been lost through centuries, that’s why we start this journey with the sacrifice of Jesus, accompany the fight of William Wallace and escape beside Jaguar Paw, to finally rescue in battle with Desmond Doss.

Here you discover that the real human is the one that stands by its own beliefs, fights for justice, defend the weak and takes care for his kind, but also struggles with inner and outer troubles, inner like pride, doubt, overconfidence, even innocence; and outer like discrimination, ignorance, fear.

So hesitation is allow, questioning the act, feelings and thoughts; however the objective from the protagonist is enormous, bigger that himself and for that reason he moves forward no matter what. Mel Gibson is known for the strong direction, without reluctance on showing how it really was, and this film is no exception.

There are amazing camera shots here, to details like finger on the trigger, spilled blood, lacerated limbs, mice eating human remains and many more; all these in order to portray the war more accurately and vividly, like nothing you have seen before or even can imagine.

There are no words to describe the great performance of Andrew Garfield and Hugo Weaving or the epic soundtrack.