Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Andrew Garfield turns in a strong performance here as a true-life conscientious objector during WWII who refused to bear arms but who was equally determined to play his part as an army medic. He portrays Desmond Doss, a devout Christian who endures dog’s abuse from his colleagues at boot camp after he accepts the draft but avails himself of a much derided get-out clause regarding avoiding rifles! The scorn he suffers, the violence and resentment he is subjected to doesn’t deter him from completing the course - even to the point when a court martial…

I don't want to say that I dislike Mel Gibson as an actor, I mean he's been in plenty of movies that I love... but like Clint Eastwood, he makes a FAR better director than he ever made an actor. Hacksaw Ridge is just one of those films where he does a great job... unfortunately it is Mel Gibson, so it's over-the-top carnage that is not at all underplayed. But you can't fault Gibson for making a Gibson film, you should really know as much coming in. And he actually got Andre Garfield to act, which might not win him a reward, but it certainly should,…

A really good movie, which only lacks in some details. This was not the first war film directed by Mel Gibson. He had previously made at least one military-themed film, “We Were Soldiers”, set in Vietnam. However, it is a film that addresses much more human and intimate themes, in my opinion, by following the Doss family, a family from rural Virginia, and the trajectory of one of their children, Desmond. Son of an extraordinarily devout mother, raised an Adventist, Desmond learns as a child to deny violence (the film shows a fight between brothers that…