New film about Conscientious Objector and Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss coming out soon.

I saw the movie last night and I used the comparison to The Pacific in describing it to a few people today. I thought it was a little more graphic than The Pacific. But the story is so compelling.

 

Thanks for the comments, Clem. I was wondering about this one.

 

Saw it two days ago. I had trouble with the way the battle scenes were depicted. They were superbly shot, don't get me wrong... But the tone was one of relish. Gibson has always tended towards Grand Guignole

If the point of the movie is to show how horrific war is, there are better ways to do it than to show a guy picking up the torso of a dead comrade and using it as a shield while charging the enemy with gun blazing... In slow motion, no less!

This comic book approach takes away some of the seriousness of Doss' real life moral dilemma. The spiritual side of the story is somewhat cheapened by those kinds of antics. I didn't know if I was to cheer the violence or feel sad...

If you see it, be warned, the middle section is gory as hell.

 

Please, keep the spoilers to a minimum. Some of us hasn't seen it yet.

 

Sorry, I didn't know that warning about the violence was a spoiler. The other thing is about fifteen seconds of the movie. Again sorry.

 

A decent article about Desmond Doss and the making of the movie.

The movie is “beyond religion, it’s about the spiritual core of individuals,” he said. “Desmond was a man of incredible simple integrity, the integrity of doing the right thing when no one is looking.
We hope this causes people to think and enter discussions of those attributes that our society seems to be losing — integrity and compassion for one another.”

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local/the-real-hero-of-hacksaw-ridge-lived-out-his-days-/ns5tS/

 

I went to see it the other night. To say it was a very good movie is an understatement. Lots of graphic scenes, much more graphic than most war movies have been save for SPR and BoB to name a few. Since seeing the movie, I have read up on as much as I can about the actual details of the battle and the men who were there. That's just something I do after watching a good movie, or just one that I like a lot. Anyway, according to Mel Gibson, he purposely left out some of Desmond Doss's exploits because he was concerned that movie goers would think that some scenes were hugely exaggerated. I'll try to see it again to see what I missed the first time around, and when it comes out on DVD, I hope that Netflix picks it up. And I also hope that there are more movies like this coming soon to a theater near me!

 

Came across a decent article on fact-checking Hacksaw Ridge. It confirms most of what the movie depicts. It also confirms what Bobby referred to, that Gibson left some facts out assuming audiences would find the true story too unbelievable.

There were a couple of points mentioned where the film differed from the facts, but these are primarily tangental and have little bearing on the main story line. For example, Desmond and Dorothy were married prior to his going on active duty, and Dorothy did not become a nurse until after the War.

 

I agree with you on the graphic stuff. A good director doesn't need it, in my opinion. I go to movies for entertainment and enjoyment.

 

I remembered this portion of the post when I saw that scene!

 

Afraid I can't agree, it was a missed opportunity. Like other Mel Gibson "historical" movies, he plays fast and very loose with facts, the battle scenes were a joke, the CGI was a joke, the special effects were a joke. The bar was raised with SPR, BoB, and the Pacific. Gibson's movie has a distinct 70's feel to it.

The script has Doss as still the "coward" at Okinawa, when in fact he'd already won a bronze star for service on Guam and the Philippines. It was a great story, packaged very badly.

 

I just watched the Blu Ray special features.

Yes in real life the unit being portrayed had previously fought in other battles before Okinawa and Doss earned their respect for his courage. These events, partly for budgetary reasons, partly for story unity, are contracted into one major set piece on Okinawa.

The Hanks-Spielberg team do some similar stuff in both BoB and the Pacific (based on my readings of the books they used as sources for the series) and they had ten hours of screen time and eight times the budget to work with. Hardly a fair comparison, but, okay.

I didn't think the special effects were a joke. For the budget, they looked pretty good. Gibson's stunt team did as much as they could practically in terms of explosions, etc. The CGI was mainly used for set extension and establishing shots with the naval ships and ocean backgrounds.

Not sure what you mean by a 70s feel, but I would like you to elaborate a little more. It's an interesting opinion I haven't heard before. Just to be clear, I don't think "Hacksaw Ridge" is a masterpiece by any stretch, but it doesn't deserve to be written off as a joke. The production team were sincere in their effort to show the horror of battle - to the point where the producer was offered twice the budget if he would do the movie as a soft PG13 and decided against it.

On the Bru Ray Desmond Doss jr. is interviewed after the first screening and he gives the movie his tearful approval. Having heard his father's story many times over his lifetime, he got a visceral idea of what his dad went through. He also approved of both Theresa Palmer as his mother and Andrew Garfield as his father. They (apparently) captured a great deal of what the Dosses were like. The strength, quiet conviction, support and sweetness.

 

By seventies feel, I mean massive gasoline explosions where there should be none, for the fake wow factor.

The playing with facts or jumbling them has nothing to do with cramming things into a two hour movie. A couple lines of dialog could have covered the previous actions in Guam and the PI.

There were no Iowa class BB's bombarding Okinawa, they ALL stayed with the fleet carriers. And the OBB's that were used weren't so close a mortar could hit them. Again, fake wow factor.

The first people going to see such movies, are the WWII fans, historians, etc. And frankly, not many others will watch war movies.

 

Actually, the events depicted in the movie actually happened. He purposely left out other events because he felt that the movie going public would doubt that they could've happened. As far as the CGI, I've seen worse and seen better. And even if those BBs were in on the shelling of Okinawa, they wouldn't have been in that close anyway.

Okinawa was the 77th ID third action. Of course the story line had have Doss as "the coward" going in, since the movie depicted their action as the unit's first. Kind of hard to jam everything into 90-120 minutes.

But still, that and other events depicted in the movie doesn't make it a terrible movie. Maybe a terrible documentary, yes for sure.

 

Gasoline explosions. Check. I'll keep my eye open for that as a cheat in movies. Thanks.
Could you help me out and tell me what BBs and OBBs are? The acronyms are throwing me off. I understand you are talking about the ships seen shelling the ridge...
I'm not sure I agree 100% that the first people going to see this movie were WWII and history fans. Pretty sure the producers were relying in a veiled way, on christians and Mel Gibson fans (Passion Of The Christ fans). The trailers emphasized Doss' Seventh Adventist pacifism and the love story. I wrote veiled because Gibson's name was subtly omitted from the campaign. Instead the copy read "from the director of Braveheart and Passion Of The Christ".

 

The acronym BB stands for battleship in naval nomenclature. Not sure what OBB means. Maybe old battleship. Lot of the pre-war battleships, and the ones raised and re-fitted after the Pearl Harbor attack were used mainly for shore bombardment. The newer battle wagons escorted the carrier task forces. They shelled beaches too, but the older ones couldn't keep up with the newer battleships and carriers commissioned after the war started.

 

Thanks Cool Dude.