I like Mel Gibson movies, and this was one of those movies friends were nagging me to see even shocked I had not seen it. So I watched it last night It was entertaining, well directed, acted, and photographed.
I realized very quickly that I knew the story My memory of the facts and details just came back to me instantly while watching. I think it was 2005 at the Angelika theater in Dallas I saw a documentary entitled, "the conscientious objector". It made an impression on me, so I started reading and studying for a few weeks or so. Oddly I never associated Desmond Doss with the story around the movie Hacksaw Ridge. Duh.
So I knew quite a bit about the history of this movie before watching it and that was my problem with it. The vast deviations from reality got to me and probably ruined what otherwise would've been a really entertaining wonderful movie.
Why Gibson felt compelled to unnecessarily deviate from reality so many times on so many things is a mystery to me? "Smitty" was a fictitious character that never existed in reality. Desmond did not enlist in the military, he was drafted. His wife wasn't a nurse when she met him, meaning he didn't meet her when he was giving blood, with the real life story much more noble - he heard about a car accident in town and walked 3 miles to give blood, and then walk there again the next day to give it again for a total of 12 miles of effort.
His father did occasionally drink too much, but he was not abusive. The drunken fight with the gun was with his father and his uncle, not his father and his mother.
He did marry his wife before he went to war, but he did not miss his wedding because he was denied a pass by the army. Speaking of his wife, she did become a nurse, but not until years after the war and because he was so damaged from the war it was difficult for him to work and maintain a job and she needed to care for him.
At Boot Camp, he was never beaten up, although he was unpopular and he was ridiculed, threatened, and harassed.
Although the army and his superiors absolutely did want to discharge him, things did not escalate nearly as dramatically as the movie portrayed.
His father never showed up in a World War I uniform demanding to talk to the general - that was total fiction- but his father did write a letter to the war services commission via his church asking for help which was granted quickly under constitutional grounds.
The war scenes section really bugged me, although they were filmed very well.
The movie completely left out perhaps the biggest act of heroism on his part - he volunteered to be one of the three people who initially climbed up the cliff and secured the netting so the rest of his unit could climb up - gaining the respect of his company right then and there, and of course even more so after he saved so many of their lives.
The Japanese trench/tunnel scene never happened. He never saved or treated a Japanese. In interviews he said he would have, but early on people in his platoon pulled guns on him once and threaten to kill him if he ever did, so he didn't and he learned that was something he just couldn't do and still be a functioning part of his unit.
The ending of the movie bugged me a lot with him being injured by a grenade as the battle was ending. That's not how it happened. He did indeed get injured by a grenade, with multiple fragment wounds. But he was later shot twice by a Japanese sniper, which shattered his entire leg bone and another his arm and shoulder.
Nevertheless he fashioned a splint with a rifle and a blanket, and then when he himself was being rescued, he gave up his stretcher, rolled over and gave treatment to a severely wounded man, then crawled 300 yards to safety. That would've been a really cool real heroic fact to put in the movie.
So although I enjoyed the movie, it deviated way too much from reality for me to truly love it.
I realized very quickly that I knew the story My memory of the facts and details just came back to me instantly while watching. I think it was 2005 at the Angelika theater in Dallas I saw a documentary entitled, "the conscientious objector". It made an impression on me, so I started reading and studying for a few weeks or so. Oddly I never associated Desmond Doss with the story around the movie Hacksaw Ridge. Duh.
So I knew quite a bit about the history of this movie before watching it and that was my problem with it. The vast deviations from reality got to me and probably ruined what otherwise would've been a really entertaining wonderful movie.
Why Gibson felt compelled to unnecessarily deviate from reality so many times on so many things is a mystery to me? "Smitty" was a fictitious character that never existed in reality. Desmond did not enlist in the military, he was drafted. His wife wasn't a nurse when she met him, meaning he didn't meet her when he was giving blood, with the real life story much more noble - he heard about a car accident in town and walked 3 miles to give blood, and then walk there again the next day to give it again for a total of 12 miles of effort.
His father did occasionally drink too much, but he was not abusive. The drunken fight with the gun was with his father and his uncle, not his father and his mother.
He did marry his wife before he went to war, but he did not miss his wedding because he was denied a pass by the army. Speaking of his wife, she did become a nurse, but not until years after the war and because he was so damaged from the war it was difficult for him to work and maintain a job and she needed to care for him.
At Boot Camp, he was never beaten up, although he was unpopular and he was ridiculed, threatened, and harassed.
Although the army and his superiors absolutely did want to discharge him, things did not escalate nearly as dramatically as the movie portrayed.
His father never showed up in a World War I uniform demanding to talk to the general - that was total fiction- but his father did write a letter to the war services commission via his church asking for help which was granted quickly under constitutional grounds.
The war scenes section really bugged me, although they were filmed very well.
The movie completely left out perhaps the biggest act of heroism on his part - he volunteered to be one of the three people who initially climbed up the cliff and secured the netting so the rest of his unit could climb up - gaining the respect of his company right then and there, and of course even more so after he saved so many of their lives.
The Japanese trench/tunnel scene never happened. He never saved or treated a Japanese. In interviews he said he would have, but early on people in his platoon pulled guns on him once and threaten to kill him if he ever did, so he didn't and he learned that was something he just couldn't do and still be a functioning part of his unit.
The ending of the movie bugged me a lot with him being injured by a grenade as the battle was ending. That's not how it happened. He did indeed get injured by a grenade, with multiple fragment wounds. But he was later shot twice by a Japanese sniper, which shattered his entire leg bone and another his arm and shoulder.
Nevertheless he fashioned a splint with a rifle and a blanket, and then when he himself was being rescued, he gave up his stretcher, rolled over and gave treatment to a severely wounded man, then crawled 300 yards to safety. That would've been a really cool real heroic fact to put in the movie.
So although I enjoyed the movie, it deviated way too much from reality for me to truly love it.