Hacksaw Ridge | Mel Gibson is back, bloody but unbowed

Hacksaw Ridge Andrew Garfield Desmond Doss

(Image credit: Please Mark Rogers photo)

Based on the incredible true story

Fiercely combative and bellicose, Mel Gibson is the last director you would imagine making a film celebrating a pacifist. As it happens, his account of World War Two US army medic Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who single-handedly saved 75 men during the battle of Okinawa without raising a gun, is as bloodily violent as any of his previous films.

Yet even if the ethics of waging war take second place to the carnage, Hacksaw Ridge is undoubtedly stirring. Andrew Garfield is movingly gutsy as the scrappy kid from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia who first faces down sneering military superiors and bullying comrades and then charges into the hellfire of battle without a gun. He gets excellent support, too, from Vince Vaughn as Doss’s gruff martinet sergeant, Teresa Palmer as his devoted nurse girlfriend and Hugo Weaving as his traumatised World War One veteran father.

Certificate 15. Runtime 139 mins. Director Mel Gibson

Hacksaw Ridge debuts on Sky Cinema Premiere on Monday 22 May. Available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2-1hz1juBI

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.