Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (July 18, 2024)
Scheduled for release in October, 2024’s Flight Risk will become Mel Gibson’s first feature as a director in eight years. For his last release in that regard, we go to 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge.
Due to childhood experiences and a deep religious faith, Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) firmly believes in the Sixth Commandment: thou shalt not kill. Despite this, Desmond enlists in the Army when the US enters World War II.
Desmond’s pacifism makes him an outcast among his fellow soldiers. However, he sticks to his guns and serves as a medic, a choice that leads to immense danger.
After a mix of bigoted comments in both 2006 and 2010, Gibson’s career took a major hit. Outside of his directorial work for 2006’s Apocalypto, Gibson essentially went AWOL over this period, as he didn’t act in any movies between 2003’s Singing Detective and 2010’s Edge of Darkness.
While not back to his prior A-list status, Gibson has acted pretty consistently since then, whereas his efforts behind the camera prove less frequent. That surprises me since one might expect Gibson’s time in exile would impact him less without him on screen.
In any case, Gibson’s directorial return with Ridge proved fairly successful. Though not a box office smash, it made $180 million worldwide on a $40 million budget, so it turned a profit.
Ridge also received good critical notices. It enjoyed six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Gibson.
All of this helped rehabilitate Gibson in the public eye, which is why it surprises me he didn’t direct another movie for eight years. Perhaps he just preferred the lower pressure and bigger paychecks involved with acting.
Ridge became Gibson’s fifth effort as director and comes as part of a fairly good filmography. Actually, I don’t know if I ever saw 1993’s Man Without a Face, but I thought his breakout 1995 flick Braveheart worked pretty well, even if I never thought it deserved the Best Picture Oscar.
2003’s Passion of the Christ turned into a massive box office hit, but I thought it suffered from too many flaws. Though it didn’t find a major audience, 2006’s Apocalypto delivered an unusual and satisfying effort.
Where does Ridge fall in this range? I’d place it along Braveheart, as both can seem superficial but they offer entertaining takes on their topics.
Really, the biggest problem with Ridge stems from its inability to make Desmond a particularly three-dimensional role. This turned into an issue with Passion as well, and both share similarities in that domain.
In particular, both films follow their leads through suffering related to their devotion to their beliefs. However, neither digs into their main characters in a particularly deep manner.
With Desmond, we get a borderline gratuitous nod to the source of his pacifism and not much more. We follow the struggles he suffers as he stays with his convictions but the movie fails to flesh out much of his inner life.
Actually, some of this criticism is probably a bit unfair, as Ridge does give us some illustrations related to Desmond’s mindset. Still, I don’t think it makes him feel like a full-fledged person, as he tends to exist more as a symbol than a human.
Garfield does fine in the part, though he was a good decade too old for the role – and looked it. The real Desmond was barely 23 when he enlisted, whereas Garfield was 32 during the film’s shoot and doesn’t remotely pass for a guy in his early 20s.
Still, Garfield manages to add depth to his performance. Although the script doesn’t give him much with which to work, he nonetheless ensures that Desmond feels reasonably real.
Ridge comes with an enticing hook. The real Desmond earned a Congressional Medal of Honor for war heroics though he never engaged in actual combat.
When Ridge gets to that part of the movie in its second half, it does well. As we saw in Braveheart, Gibson knows how to stage compelling battle sequences, and he paints the brutality of WWII in a dynamic and terrifying manner.
The issue comes from the fact we find ourselves stuck with fairly trite material until we get to that part of the film. As noted, the movie doesn’t make Desmond a particularly interesting role, and the dramatic domains tend to feel a bit trite.
Still, that second half does provide a pretty solid view of warfare. Painted in graphic detail, Ridge gives us a strong partrayal of Desmond’s efforts during battle.
That seems like enough to make Ridge a largely compelling film. While its more character-based moments tend to lean cliché, the combat elements pack enough of a punch to compensate.
