Hacksaw Ridge, which opened in wide release last weekend, represents Mel Gibson’s directorial comeback after years in the professional wilderness, following the July 2006 publication of a DUI arrest report that quoted him as saying, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” and the July 2010 leak of a recorded phone call in which he told his then-girlfriend, “You look like a pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of niggers it will be your fault.” Gibson apologized for both slurs, attributing the first to alcoholic insanity and the second to the trauma of a messy breakup, and he’s been sober for nine years. But some will never forgive him; writers for the Atlantic and the Daily Beast recently slammed the director for failing to exhibit the proper contrition during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Hard as it might be to separate Gibson’s despicable sentiments from his latest movie, that’s what I’m going to do, because Hacksaw Ridge will tell you all you need to know about Gibson’s yearning, misshapen heart.
Screenwriters Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan have conveniently erased the three years separating Doss’s induction in 1942 and his ultimate deployment to the Pacific theater; that’s a necessity, because they’re constructing a story in which Desmond redeems himself in the eyes of his fellow men. You couldn’t ask for a more horrific testing ground: Okinawa was the last, biggest, and bloodiest battle of World War II, claiming the lives of more than 12,000 Americans and 110,000 Japanese. U.S. forces landed easily along the southwest shore but, heading inland, faced well-entrenched and desperately committed Japanese forces who fired from concrete pillboxes amid the limestone hills and hid in networks of caves and tunnels. Re-creating the battle, Gibson embraces the Hamburger Helper aesthetic of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, blood and viscera spraying all over the place as Doss and company face their first withering firefight. In standard war-movie fashion, Doss and Smitty must save each other in combat, and Smitty goes first, shooting the Japanese soldier who’s about to bayonet Doss and then humbling the grateful CO with a silent look of reproach.
Directed by Mel Gibson
