It rained like a grand meteor shower. As if fire has descended down from the mighty skies to wreak havoc. The blood and ground became one and staged upon them was the dance of madness in all its bloodcurdling horror and savagery. As the cavalry marched into Hacksaw Ridge, war became one with men. It penetrated their skins, hinged its claws behind their necks and compelled their actions. It felt as if all of the existence has collapsed into a single moment of warfare. And this moment is to last till eternity.

Hacksaw Ridge is an extremely difficult experience to process. It thwarts us with a loosely stringed beginning and culminates as a catastrophically moving account. Based on a true story of a conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss who saved 75 men during a battle in World War II, it plunges its hand deep into faiths and convictions. It pits valiance against violence and out emerges one true virtue, empathy. 

Mel Gibson constructs the first half as a delicate entity for he had reserved all hell for the meatier war scenes to grace later. Wearing the directorial crown after a hiatus of 10 years, Hacksaw Ridge seems like a deeply passionate ambition fired on all cylinders. Gibson beautifully parallels tenderly love emotions that sets heart rolling to the utter desolate chasms of war that takes the best of men and alters their morals like nothing else.

Hacksaw Ridge is destruction personified. It weighs the fragility of life against concreteness of faith. Mel Gibson has directed a vision of devastation so harrowing that it’ll make the bravest of our kind to look away. It is powerfully disturbing and emotionally rousing in equal measures. Hacksaw Ridge builds a fountain of wisdom from the well of deeply spiritual questions while condemning the godlessness of violence to its core.

★★★★½