Posted on 11/14/2016 4:52:35 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Like the voters who plan to stay home on Election Day because they don’t like the candidates, potential filmgoers who avoid Hacksaw Ridge because they object to Mel Gibson will be the losers. Hacksaw Ridge, the true story of a conscientious objector who played a big role in winning World War II by enduring relentless punishment on and off the battlefield, saved countless lives on the front lines in the bloody Battle of Okinawa without ever carrying an assault weapon and became one of the most decorated heroes in military history without firing a single shot, is the best war film since Saving Private Ryan. It is violent, harrowing, heartbreaking and unforgettable. And yes, it was directed by Mel Gibson. He deserves a medal, too.
Shot entirely in Australia, though set in Virginia and Japan, this is the passionate, heartfelt saga of Desmond Doss, a naive, uneducated and unsophisticated hick from the Blue Ridge Mountains who turned pacifist after a near-tragic childhood accident incurred in a childhood scuffle with his older brother. So convinced that taking another man’s life was the most egregious sin in the Ten Commandments, Doss hated aggression so much that when he went to the movies on a date he could hardly sit through newsreels.
This was doubly hard to reconcile with incidents in early sections of the film showing Desmond’s challenging family life with a loving, overly religious mother who was often savagely beaten by his drunken, abusive father (Rachel Griffiths and Hugo Weaving, two of Australia’s best actors, playing with perfect backwoods American accents); his strong faith in the church of Seventh Day Adventists that guided his way and lit his path to manhood and beyond; his head-over-heels love for a pretty nurse (Teresa Palmer) who became his wife and partner forever. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...
Bingo!
Band of Brothers and The Pacific.
None better than these two.
I saw SPR at a matinee showing in Nashville when it came out. I was by myself as my wife and I were in town for one of her work training sessions and I had an afternoon with nothing to do and when the film ended there was just complete silence in the theater other than quiet sobs and it was WWII and Korean war era vets being consoled by their wives. Very moving.
Looking forward to seeing it. Didn’t care much for Gibson as a leading man type but he caught my attention with Braveheart and The Patriot. Still can’t watch those without the screen getting blurry. The Passion of the Christ breaks me down in the good way when watching. I’ve only seen Apocolyto once, a son-in-law rented it for me and it also brought out a passionate response for freedom. Mel Gibson obviuosly has a deep love and understanding of liberty despite getting in deep water as I recall with vulgar anti semitic comments while drunk driving. He’s also shown a love of history in those film choices that I admire.
We had a CO Medic like that in out unit, unlike the rest, who changed his mind during TET in the Saigon area.
He got a close look up of what the gooks did to Civilians and did a 180.
It does show that there were people who could have qualified for CO status but "seen their duty and done it".
Such people deserve to be lauded for their service because they had an out and did not take it.
Do I agree with their stance? No.
Irrelevant currently.
They did what they could in every way that they felt they could.
Mel Gibson’s dad Hutton moved the family from America to Australia to keep his eldest son from being drafted for Vietnam. So there may be an anti war streak in Mel courtesy of his dad’s influence. But Hutton was no conscientious objector, he had been a First Lt during WWII, wounded at Guadalcanal.
It is my understanding that the Seventh Day Adventists were COs but still volunteered to be medics and corpsmen, so Good On Them for that.
Brother-in-law saw Saving Private Ryan and said the only flaw was that there was not enough smoke at Omaha.
played a big role in winning World War II by enduring relentless punishment on and off the battlefield
That statement makes no sense. Did he break anything or kill anyone (that's how wars are won). Did he tour the USA as a Medal of Honor hero to raise war bonds? Doubtful, it was 1945. And it isn't a stretch to note that praising someone labeled as a CO (whether accurate or not) isn't exactly the best way to raise a fighting army, in the big scheme of thngs, even though he was a genuine hero.
turned pacifist after a near-tragic childhood accident incurred in a childhood scuffle with his older brother. So convinced that taking another man’s life was the most egregious sin in the Ten Commandments
or this:
refusing to compromise his religious principles that forbid him to bear arms.
Rex Reed is either ridiculing Doss' beliefs, or ridiculing the Ten Commandments. I don't know which -- was PFC Doss afraid of guns, traumatized by the childhood incident (as Reed says), or was he just following his religion (as Reed says -- and if so, how did the childhood incident, that I presume involved a weapon, happen? It's not clear.) Of course the Bible definitely is not pacifistic. The Macabees were the most heroic of the faithful. Come to think of it, I would love it if Mel Gibson would make a movie about them.
Rex Reed has no problem with broad generalities like "hayseed hick" but imagine if Doss were black, from the Mississippi delta -- would he have used pejoratives? NO, because that would be politically incorrect -- I'm not advocating political correctness, I'm pointing out that PC doesn't apply to "uneducated hayseed hick whites", as we just experienced (again) from Left-wing post-election analysis.
I agree, I can’t stand Reed.
I think you should watch the movie and read up on the life of Desmond Doss before you offer such a scathing review.
He spent 6 years in military hospitals after the war, losing a lung to TB and had a 100% disability. He crawled off his litter when he was being carried off the battlefield to give care to someone more severely injured. The movie doesn’t do justice to the real story.
Not the movie I was criticizing. Read it again, I was lambasting Rex Reed.
Saw the movie today and read about Desmond Doss on the net. The movie is just a snippet of what his man did.
Amazing man.
I saw this yesterday.
4 stars, honestly, instant classic.
If the academy doesn’t give Gibson the Oscar, eff them.
thanks for the links, interesting.
However, my main grip about Hacksaw Ridge is the casting of Andrew Garfield. I can not stand him. Plus, in the trailer to the film, while it may be gospel and true that the real Desmond Doss would 'not even touch a gun' for any reason, I just find that wholly unbelievable on the face of it--
Many medics and corpsmen were conscientious objectors but they carried pistols just in case in both the European and Pacific Theaters. Especially in the Pacific as the Japanese did not play by any of the Geneva Accord rules at all.
When it comes to Netflix in 6 to 8 mpnths, I will probably watch the DVD but I won't be seeing it in the theater.
I’ve heard it was amazing.
I’ll see it eventually. Always liked Mel.
Just came from seeing it. Just go it is an outstanding film and the story is even better. Everything a great film should be.
‘It’ll have to be really good to be better than Fury.’
I agree. Fury is awsome, but I’ve never seen Hacksaw Ridge yet.
Since it’s getting good reviews, I want to buy Hacksaw just to tick off the leftists.
And frankly, I smelled a rat back during Gibsons ‘creepy phone’ scandal. I bet she egged him on. Actors role-play all the time.
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