Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) is a Seventh-Day Adventist from Virginia. During World War II, he feels obligated to join the army though he also refuses to touch a gun; he wants to be an Army medic. This results in a lot of trouble with his NCOs and his commanding officers. Even so, he is allowed to go to war, armed only with bandages. He proves his worth in Okinawa on Hacksaw Ridge. The trailer pretty much tells the plot, the movie just offers the details.
With this being a biopic of Desmond, Mel Gibson gets too distracted by the actual combat. The bloody and gruesome battles last entirely too long. Much of that should have been on the cutting room floor, perhaps added to the eventually DVD as an extended deleted scene. After watching the movie, I was of the impression that Doss must have joined in 1944 or 1945 and Okinawa was his first deployment. Nope, he joined in 1942 and served in Guam and the Philippines before arriving in Okinawa.
Amazingly, the movie undersells Doss. The movie has him carried on a stretcher with a serious leg wound and evacuated from the ridge. In fact, he swapped places on the stretcher with a soldier he judged to be in worse shape, was then shot in the arm by a sniper, and eventually had to crawl several hundred yards to an aide station. Gibson thought that was too unbelievable to include. It was particularly satisfying that the movie concluded with interviews of Desmond Doss, his brother, and his captain.
Though Doss is certainly worthy of great praise and a true hero, the movie is mostly padding for his eventual heroic acts. I was very much reminded of Sergeant York. In that movie, Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, who famously killed more than 2 dozen Germans and captured another 132 at the battle of Meuse-Argonne. His actual claim to fame was maybe 10 to 15 minutes of film. The added two hours were just filler. Not bad filler but filler nonetheless. Hacksaw Ridge shares that problem.
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