Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
I don’t give a rat’s ass about your principles, because the J*ps don’t.
THE SUMMARY: A Seventh-Day Adventist aspires to serve his country in World War II but refuses to shoot or handle a firearm on religious and moral grounds - after navigating conflict with the Army and his fellow soldiers, he pulls dozens of wounded men to safety on Okinawa and earns the Medal of Honor in a remarkable and mostly true war story.
THE BEST:
The battle of principles versus practicality: Yes, this movie is about brutal physical battle on Okinawa, about as nasty as it comes. But more fundamentally, this movie is about an intellectual battle between men who will do anything to survive, and a man who will never disobey what he believes to be God’s orders and truth - in other words, the ‘principles’ versus ‘practicality’ argument that is a constantly recurring theme of our show.
Do you want to win, or do you want to die with honor? If you listen to the show, you know I lean heavily on the moral principle side of that debate, but as this movie shows, that debate isn’t really about a dichotomous choice, either this or that - it’s more about two necessary pieces of the same puzzle, like yin and yang.
For example, in this film, as noble as he is, if your entire Army unit is nothing but Dosses, you lose. The Japanese run you over and laugh in your face yelling ‘banzai’ as they bayonet you right in the principles. However, if your Army unit lacks Doss, the moral clarity and courage he brings is lost, a unit desperate and defeated is more inclined to give up, and dozens of men bleed out on that Pacific island.
Without the rest of the men to do the dirty work, Doss is entirely useless. But without Doss, the rest of the men are also less effective. The true answer to this ‘principles versus practicality’ debate is both - we need both the physical, emotional, and mental strength to do what is necessary to survive, combined with and guided by the moral truth necessary to prevent us from becoming the very evil we fight.
The wholesomeness of a bygone era: Even though the origin of their relationship was mostly fictionalized (Dorothy was not a nurse when she met Desmond, they were married before Desmond joined the Army, so he didn’t miss their wedding sitting in a jail cell, etc.), the wholesomeness of their love story was appreciated. A young man sees what he wants, and he makes a polite and insistent move to marry her. She loves him too, but she still insists that he follow the rules and not kiss her without asking.
Our society is in desperate need of reacquaintance with these values - men pursuing women for marriage as a top priority, and women holding men to the highest standard to win them, while also holding themselves to similar heights to be worthy of such an effort.
The absolutely brutal warfare presentation: I’ve seen a few war movies in my time, so I’m not easily shocked by gore or battlefield violence presentations, but damn - this movie has some memorable imagery. I will always credit a jump scare that you know is coming but still gets you jumping anyway - it’s difficult to do and this movie has a terrifying one as the fighting starts on Okinawa. The soldiers cautiously advance across rat-infested foxholes full of decaying bodies, and you know it’s coming soon, but when it does, it’s still shocking: a somehow-still-alive soldier pops up screaming, only to be shot through the back of the head by incoming Japanese fire that gets the guy who startled him killed too.
Largely accurate presentation of the details that matter: Whenever I watch a supposedly true story, I never check the facts before watching. I want to experience the presentation unbiased first, and then figure out what was true later. In this case, while watching what Desmond Doss allegedly did, I figured it had to be a lot of embellished bullshit. Sure, maybe he saved a couple guys, and maybe he improvised some rope rappel system to get them back down the cliffside, but there’s no way he did it on that scale and under that sort of immediate Japanese threat.
Then I looked it up - as far as his battlefield heroics, the movie’s presentation is largely true. You can read his Medal of Honor citation here, and according to this fact-by-fact breakdown, many of the specific scenarios presented are accurate. Yes, Doss personally extracted an estimated 75 men. Yes, Doss improvised with limited rope to get them down. Yes, Doss even helped a Japanese soldier in the process.
THE WORST:
Vince Vaughn is hard to take seriously: It’s not that it’s his fault or that he had a bad performance, but Vince Vaughn in my mind is just a forever comedy character. While his role in this movie is intended to be somewhat funny, I have a hard time taking him deadly serious as is intended here. But if that’s the worst I can say about the movie, it’s not much of a substantive complaint.
I’d trade away some backstory for some more battle scenes: The movie excluding credits is just over two hours long, and it breaks down into about an hour of backstory and an hour of battle. Given a lot more creative liberties were taken in writing the backstory, and given that the real Desmond Doss had additional battlefield accomplishments that were not portrayed, I’d like to see a little less of the setup and a little more of the action.
For example, Desmond Doss was never court martialed, and while his father did intervene to get the Army to ease up on tough treatment of him, the theatrics of that court martial hearing in the movie never happened. Likewise, Doss never sat in an Army jail cell.
However, Doss was one of three men who volunteered to install those cargo nets on the hostile cliffside upon his unit’s arrival on Okinawa. Doss also had his arm shattered by a Japanese sniper round while trying to treat another man, just after Doss himself had taken grenade shrapnel. This was fictionalized in the movie as Doss getting his helmet grazed by a sniper round, specifically because Mel Gibson thought showing Doss taking too much abuse would be a less believable story, even if it was true.
Bottom line, we don’t have to make up some exaggerated backstory and ignore real battlefield heroics to make Desmond Doss a compelling figure. Still, I love this movie as both a dramatic telling of American history and as an examination of moral principle.
THE RATING: 5/5 Wickies. Fictional liberties aside, this movie is both war drama and moral philosophy at their finest.
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NEXT WEEK: Fight Club (1999)
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