Gibson returns to film’s frontline with a ferociously felt anti-war movie, while Garfield invests his Doss with tremendous conviction.
Occasionally soapy on the homefront but cataclysmic in combat, this is a worthy addition to the WWII canon. Garfield underpins it all with skill, showing that sometimes, war can be humanising too.
The bombastic effects and Simon Duggan's creeping cinematography underscore both the carnage of combat and the strength of the human spirit, which can shine through even the most hellish of situations.
A sterling modern war picture with an intriguing moral twist.
Gibson’s achievement is to have made a rousing and optimistic movie about subject matter that could hardly be more grim.
All the subtlety and nuance Mel Gibson brought to the multi-Oscar winning Braveheart is once again on display in his multi-Oscar nominated Second World War drama Hacksaw Ridge, a blunt, brutal, bloody mess of a movie that displays the full range of Gibson’s skills as a chronicler of eye-watering suffering on the battlefield and his propensity for corny mythmaking off it.
Andrew Garfield delivers a sympathetic performance as a soldier who refuses to carry a gun in this powerful real-life story of heroism in world war two.
Mel Gibson directs this true-life tale of a US army medic who refused to bear arms with great force, but little subtlety.
Hacksaw Ridge: The men who went to war without firing a single bullet.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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