Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Hacksaw Ridge delivers exceptional acting, particularly from Andrew Garfield as Doss, and Mel Gibson's direction produces viscerally stunning and harrowing battle cinematography that ranks among the finest war filmmaking of the decade. The ending, grounded in a true story of extraordinary moral conviction, lands with genuine emotional power. The plot follows a fairly conventional biopic structure — upbringing, conflict, redemption arc — which keeps it from standing out narratively, and while the pacifist-soldier premise is distinctive, the war genre trappings are familiar enough to temper its novelty score.