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TGM
11-09-2016, 04:39 PM
HACKSAW RIDGE

Director: Mel Gibson

imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2119532/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

TGM
11-09-2016, 04:41 PM
The stuff all leading up to him signing up for the army was sorta middling, but once we step foot on the battlefield, this suddenly becomes a pretty great movie.

Lazlo
11-09-2016, 05:52 PM
Yeah, it's a goofy movie but it's well shot and pretty engrossing at times.

Ivan Drago
12-20-2016, 12:55 AM
All the typical war movie tropes are there, from the good ol' farmboy to the alcoholic father to the overbearing sergeant*, but once they get to the ridge, it's brutal, intense and suspenseful as all get out. Garfield is fantastic, as are the cinematography and editing.

*Speaking of which, there were people laughing in my screening of this at Vince Vaughn's insults (who even after this, I can't buy as a dramatic actor no matter how hard he tries), and that's why I pose this question: does anyone find this particular trope intentionally funny? I found it hysterical when I saw Full Metal Jacket as a teenager, but when I revisit it as an adult, I find myself wondering if I should. Ermey's Kubrick stare in that movie is unsettling now.

Peng
01-28-2017, 11:11 AM
Gibson has never been a subtle filmmaker, but the long absence from directing seems to make him moreeeee heavy-handed. First half is an almost excruciatingly chirpy, unintentional parody of an Oscarbait film, with occasional and somewhat fascinating bursts of gore to (thankfully) interrupt that extreme earnestness from time to time. The second half almost exactly inverts this ratio, and the director is much more at home with storytelling through violence (ironic for this particular real-life story). Very good, heartstoppingly intense stuff, if unfortunately piling on the melodrama side of that ratio right around the end, which also makes its moral and thematic stances feeling (even more) murky. 6.5/10

Rico
02-11-2017, 09:53 AM
First half could be trimmed by 20 minutes and you wouldn't lose the overall impact to the story. Second half was remarkable, but I question how much of it was exaggerated by Mel.

I still don't know what to think of Vince Vaughn's role in this. He was both the highlight of the film for me, but also felt completely out of place.

Dukefrukem
02-12-2017, 12:47 AM
Really enjoyed this. Actually got emotional in some parts. I agree, the first half is a bit long-winded and I'm not sure why they dropped the brother story considering it was such an important aspect of how he became who he was. The war scenes were well shot- Hugo Weaving was a standout for me. Vince Vaughn seemed a bit of a miscast- and I don't even mean that from a typecast standpoint. I just think they could have got more out of a better actor. Every time I saw him holding a machine gun it felt out of place.

transmogrifier
02-23-2017, 02:34 AM
Solid as a typical underdog-makes-good tale and Garfield is excellent. However, for the first 20 minutes or so, I was wondering "Is this guy supposed to be mentally impaired?" because the "courting" scenes are ludicrous, with Garfield acting Forrest Gumpesque with that stupid grin and staring like a stalker. The film as a whole doesn't really know what to do with Doss' home life, and it comes across as a little impatient and unfocused (e.g., what happened to the brother? was the kid religious at all before the brick incident? Why have the struggle over the gun with his father as a random flashback?), as if the director just really, really wanted to get to the battlefield and fuck shit up. And boy does he. Of course, it wouldn't be a Gibson movie without ridiculously unnecessary scenes of violence - in this case, the death of the Japanese military commander, who we never see at any stage beforehand, but whose head Gibson apparently thought we really, really needed to see lopped off.

That it still works is a testament to Garfield and the natural interest in the story.

Ezee E
02-24-2017, 03:52 AM
STOP with the Drill Sergeant scenes please......

And STOP with pointless flash forwards to start off the movie.

Outside of that, I'm quite happy with the movie. It made me realize that there really aren't that many good battlefield movies from the 2000's. I came up with a list with my brother, and was surprised that in 17 years, it was a struggle to come up with ten.

MY TEN TOP WAR MOVIES SINCE 2000 (Must be battlefield war):
1)Black Hawk Down
2)Hurt Locker
3)Lone Survivor
4)Jarhead
5)Hacksaw Ridge

Inglorious Basterds and The Pianist get asterisks here.

Idioteque Stalker
02-24-2017, 04:17 AM
Garfield is excellent. However, for the first 20 minutes or so, I was wondering "Is this guy supposed to be mentally impaired?"

Since he is not supposed to be mentally impaired, I don't understand.

Garfield has taken the leap into prestige films and is way over his head with both this and Silence. And while the second half of this movie is directed well from a strictly action-oriented point of view, there is an inherent moral disconnect between the anti-war themes and extended sequences of gruesome violence. The film is not without merit, but I pretty much hated it regardless.

Ezee E
02-24-2017, 04:29 AM
Since he is not supposed to be mentally impaired, I don't understand.

Garfield has taken the leap into prestige films and is way over his head with both this and Silence. And while the second half of this movie is directed well from a strictly action-oriented point of view, there is an inherent moral disconnect between the anti-war themes and extended sequences of gruesome violence. The film is not without merit, but I pretty much hated it regardless.

I get what trans is saying with the way he stares at people for extended times and his speech patterns. Overly, inexplicably weird.

Idioteque Stalker
02-24-2017, 05:01 AM
What I mean is how can he 1) be excellent and 2) portray a non-mentally impaired character as being mentally impaired?

transmogrifier
02-24-2017, 05:02 AM
Because I think he was directed to do it.

Idioteque Stalker
02-24-2017, 05:20 AM
In that case, bravo.

TGM
02-24-2017, 05:24 AM
STOP with the Drill Sergeant scenes please......

And STOP with pointless flash forwards to start off the movie.

Outside of that, I'm quite happy with the movie. It made me realize that there really aren't that many good battlefield movies from the 2000's. I came up with a list with my brother, and was surprised that in 17 years, it was a struggle to come up with ten.

MY TEN TOP WAR MOVIES SINCE 2000 (Must be battlefield war):
1)Black Hawk Down
2)Hurt Locker
3)Lone Survivor
4)Jarhead
5)Hacksaw Ridge

Inglorious Basterds and The Pianist get asterisks here.

I'd include We Were Soldiers, personally.

transmogrifier
02-24-2017, 05:28 AM
We Were Soldiers is one of my most hated films ever.

TGM
02-24-2017, 05:28 AM
In regards to Garfield, the big question mark for me is how he was nominated for his performance in this movie, as opposed to his performance in Silence. 'Cause while he may have been good here, he was terrific in the latter.

Idioteque Stalker
02-24-2017, 05:56 AM
He was bad in both. And he is the best Spider-Man yet.

TGM
02-24-2017, 06:17 AM
And he is the best Spider-Man yet.

We agree on that much at least. :p

Dukefrukem
02-24-2017, 01:14 PM
STOP with the Drill Sergeant scenes please......

And STOP with pointless flash forwards to start off the movie.

Outside of that, I'm quite happy with the movie. It made me realize that there really aren't that many good battlefield movies from the 2000's. I came up with a list with my brother, and was surprised that in 17 years, it was a struggle to come up with ten.

MY TEN TOP WAR MOVIES SINCE 2000 (Must be battlefield war):
1)Black Hawk Down
2)Hurt Locker
3)Lone Survivor
4)Jarhead
5)Hacksaw Ridge



Oof. Outside of Hacksaw Ridge, each one of those movies are in my bottom 100 of all time.

Ezee E
02-25-2017, 01:14 AM
Oof. Outside of Hacksaw Ridge, each one of those movies are in my bottom 100 of all time.

Not a fan of battlefield movies eh?

What are your tops?

Dukefrukem
02-25-2017, 12:21 PM
Not a fan of battlefield movies eh?

What are your tops?

I am. Those I just didn't feel were very good. This list can't be right though because there's a Malick film on it.

1. The Bridge On the River Kwai
2. Full Metal Jacket
3 The Great Escape
4. Braveheart
5. Inglourious Basterds*
6. The Thin Red Line

Ezee E
02-25-2017, 02:25 PM
I am. Those I just didn't feel were very good. This list can't be right though because there's a Malick film on it.

1. The Bridge On the River Kwai
2. Full Metal Jacket
3 The Great Escape
4. Braveheart
5. Inglourious Basterds*
6. The Thin Red Line

From the 2000s.

Ezee E
02-25-2017, 02:26 PM
I am. Those I just didn't feel were very good. This list can't be right though because there's a Malick film on it.

1. The Bridge On the River Kwai
2. Full Metal Jacket
3 The Great Escape
4. Braveheart
5. Inglourious Basterds*
6. The Thin Red Line

From the 2000s.

Dukefrukem
02-25-2017, 07:53 PM
Ah. Missed that.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi would be #1 then.

Grouchy
03-06-2017, 05:30 AM
Come on, people, this was a literal piece of shit. There's always one spectacularly bad movie at the Oscars nominated for Best Picture and I'm really hoping this is it.

Agree with the mental retardation thing. I couldn't believe the courting cinema scene was from a real movie and not a Zucker Brothers parody.


Speaking of which, there were people laughing in my screening of this at Vince Vaughn's insults (who even after this, I can't buy as a dramatic actor no matter how hard he tries), and that's why I pose this question: does anyone find this particular trope intentionally funny? I found it hysterical when I saw Full Metal Jacket as a teenager, but when I revisit it as an adult, I find myself wondering if I should. Ermey's Kubrick stare in that movie is unsettling now.
I thought Gibson was liberally lifting from Full Metal Jacket for those scenes - he even did the "this gun is my wife" bit. And yeah, I kind of find those scenes inherently funny... But in the Kubrick film they had a purpose. Here they don't.

Irish
03-06-2017, 07:54 AM
Come on, people, this was a literal piece of shit.

What? No.

- Gibson paints in broad strokes; war movies aren't known for the nuance and the audience that goes to see them doesn't want it anyway. The down-home country stuff is used as contrast to the viciousness of the battle scenes. Both of them are extreme representations of a singular idea and they need to be for the movie to work. HR has a Clint Eastwood sensibility about it, but with Gibson's personal obsessions layered through.

- It's possible Gibson is quoting FMJ, and other war movies, intentionally. (If he is, I don't fully buy into it because Vince Vaughn is weak in that role.)

- The US military is consistent to the point of obstinacy. The "this is my rifle" cadence didn't, ya know, originate with Stanley Kubrick.

- R Lee Ermey aside, Kubrick's bootcamp scenes are debatable, especially if we consider what he tried to do and how he adapted the book FMJ is based on. Gibson's use definitely has a purpose.

Grouchy
03-06-2017, 02:50 PM
- Gibson paints in broad strokes; war movies aren't known for the nuance and the audience that goes to see them doesn't want it anyway. The down-home country stuff is used as contrast to the viciousness of the battle scenes. Both of them are extreme representations of a singular idea and they need to be for the movie to work. HR has a Clint Eastwood sensibility about it, but with Gibson's personal obsessions layered through.
Eh, I don't buy the genre justification, that because a movie belongs to a certain genre it's allowed to be stupid. I've also seen the WWII dyptic directed by Clint Eastwood - they're not stupid. This film is stupid. And this coming from a person who loved Passion and hasn't forgotten Apocalypto.


- It's possible Gibson is quoting FMJ, and other war movies, intentionally. (If he is, I don't fully buy into it because Vince Vaughn is weak in that role.)

- The US military is consistent to the point of obstinacy. The "this is my rifle" cadence didn't, ya know, originate with Stanley Kubrick.

- R Lee Ermey aside, Kubrick's bootcamp scenes are debatable, especially if we consider what he tried to do and how he adapted the book FMJ is based on. Gibson's use definitely has a purpose.
I didn't know that and I haven't read The Short-Timers... but come on. I'll elaborate a bit. This movie has a similar structure in that it presents us with an hour of a soldier's making at home and then an hour of his tour. In FMJ the first hour is a self-contained story about the process of turning a soldier into a killing machine and how it successfully makes a murdered out of Pvt. Pyle. In Gibson's idiocy, the training scenes are about breaking Doss, but it doesn't work - his father bails him out and he goes to war with his moral values intact. Then comes the tour part, which is a controversial part of Kubrick's film. Many like it, most hate it. But it's certainly coherent with the film Kubrick wants to make. I think his intention was to depict warfare without making a value judgement or throwing a political agenda at his audience, while simultaneously showing the effect it has on foot soldiers. I don't think this complexity is present in Hacksaw Ridge. Gibson wants to make a gung ho WWII show in the vein of John Wayne's Green Berets project - the problem is that he also tries to make a statement about peace and "the conscientious objector". I enjoyed the war scenes, they were well shot, and after an hour of boredom they were very welcome... but they are nothing I haven't seen before. The movie's themes are rendered kind of lame by the spectacle of warfare. It's like... OK, this guy didn't want to grab a rifle. This is still war and he didn't invent being a doctor - in fact, he isn't even one as far as I can tell. I'm pretty sure war medics know how to use guns as well.

Besides, like I said before, what really bothered me is how this one felt like a parody of an Oscar bait film, with scenes that made me want to machine gun my TV screen in frustration like the whole romantic plot or the scene in the trenches where the bully becomes his friend. These moments were outdated and cheesy in the 1970s.