Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

War movie? That's what the poster says. I'd say that looks deceive... At least figuratively speaking. Or, well, we could say "Hacksaw Ridge" is a war movie, if you can fight war with peace... And probably you, because the story's real.

I guess it's quite clear for who read a synopsis or saw the trailer what's the subject here. An US recruit, detached in Okinawa at the end of WW2, refuses to carry a weapon and enters the battle as medic. And in a night somehow makes a miracle happening saving more than 70 wounded from the enemy lines. What you can't see so clearly in the trailer are the details. Especially the background story. The soldier, Desmond Doss, enlists voluntarily in the army, during the war, being a "conscientious objector". More precisely the guy has an "allergy" to rifles. Not only that he's anti-killing, he effectively doesn't want to touch a weapon. Not even in training, not even to carry a pistol for self-defense. Nothing. Now, remember the time... We're in the US army, the '40s, infantry division. Guess what happens? Well, pretty much everything. Pressure, beatings, psychiatric exam, up to the martial court. Nothing to shatter the man's belief that he can go to war without a gun. And in the end he gets there...

Mel is back. And I don't care about politically correctness regarding the man's personal life and opinions, from my point of view (at least since Ridley Scott started to be too commercially appealing) Gibson is the best director in activity. You can see the long break since "Apocalypto", but can also see that he still knows what he's doing there. The movie is not perfect. There are maybe some exaggerated war scenes. There are some cliches, but not as many as I was expecting. But above all, he delivers a metaphor that I referred in the beginning, maybe not as intended and obvious, but it's there. Is the story of somebody nuts enough, to see with all the risk beyond the noise surrounding that there's a place for calm. Or smart enough to feel that in an action, maybe justified, but destructive by nature, fate must somehow give some winning chance to a complete opposite replica, which doesn't care who's friend or foe, but only about good without evil ... just for the sake of balance.

Rating: 4 out of 5