Hacksaw Ridge 10 things you need to know about this great war film

This biographical WW2 film was released in 2016 and it's been a remarkable success, because it's a great film. Following the story of American Desmond Doss, who practises non-violence, despite this he joins the Army in World War 2 to do his duty. Find out 10 great facts about this epic World War Two film below. Hacksaw Ridge is currently available on Netflix UK, Amazon video for £3.49 to rent and £5.99 to buy.


1. Desmond Doss the first conscientious objector Medal of Honor winner

President Truman presenting Cpl. Doss with his Medal Of Honor 1/11/45

Well sort of, Doss did indeed get awarded the United States highest military award the Congressional Medal of Honour for his exceptional bravery. However was he a conscientious objector? The United States Army certainly thought so and classified him as such, Desmond himself however did not classify himself this way. He preferred the term conscientious co-operator, as although he practised non-violence he was eager to serve his country and as events would later prove he was as brave, fearless and committed to his comrades in battle as any soldier could be. Desmond Doss was not the only conscientious objector Medal of Honour recipient, later in the Vietnam war another Christian medic by the name of Thomas William Bennett was posthumously awarded the medal after being killed in action. Like Doss he also saved his fellow soldiers under enemy fire but was a non-combatant.

2. Desmond Doss was not a pacifist

As depicted in Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss volunteered to serve in the US Army in World War Two in 1942 William Thomas Doss, he was not drafted. In fact he might not have been drafted because he worked as a carpenter in a shipping yard and would have been doing his service to the war effort there. Following in the footsteps of his father, as depicted in the film, Doss volunteered for service. This presumably meant that he believed in the war and thus was not opposed to the concept of war and not a pacifist.

4. Doss was more of a hero than portrayed in the film; part 1 before Hacksaw Ridge

It's a funny statement to read, I know, how could anyone be more heroic than the lead of Hacksaw Ridge? Well for two reasons omitted from the film, Desmond Doss bravely served in theatre well before the events around the Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa. Starting the great heroic tradition of charging into the battlefield unarmed and rescuing wounded comrades with little thought for his own safety. For his efforts in Guam and Leyte, Desmond Doss was awarded 2 Bronze Stars, this was before he'd even clapped eyes on Hacksaw Ridge.

Desmond Doss pictured on top of the
Maeda Escarpment
quite a bit smaller than on the big screen

5. Doss was more of a hero than portrayed in the film; part 2 wounded by a sniper

Again a funny statement to read, but it's true. During the events on Okinawa, Doss was injured by a grenade and waited for 5 hours for his comrades to come and rescue him. When they did arrive, they tried to rescue him during a Japanese tank attack, sighting a soldier more injured than himself Doss treated him and gave up his place on the stretcher for the more injured soldier. Again Doss waited for rescue in this time a Japanese sniper shot him in the arm, shattering the bone. Already suffering from the grenade blast and with a badly injured arm, Doss used a rifle stock as a splint and crawled 300 yards under fire to safety. This part of the Doss tale was omitted from the movie as it was feared that audiences would not find it believable. Not often a movie underplays heroism and sacrifice!

6. The film is directed by Mel Gibson.

Something of a polarising character over the last decade or so, due to his beliefs and how some of his other films were received, is this a return to grace for the Hollywood icon? In sharp contrast to The Passion of the Christ, Hacksaw Ridge was nowhere near as controversial as Passion of the Christ, despite the fact both movies focus in some part on religion and belief. It was the fact that he had directed the Passion that was appealing to the investors of Hacksaw Ridge. It's also noteworthy that the main protagonists in Gibson's earlier films Braveheart and Apocalypto, were characters defined by violence yet Desmond Doss is the complete opposite.

7. The film is Australian

*Spits out tea* ok this isn't supposed to be a running theme of film facts made in other countries, but like Full Metal Jacket the story behind this one is interesting. It was never meant to be an Australian film, however funding issues would mean that it had to be. The film had initially applied for tax reliefs from the Australian Government but these were denied unless the production was shown to be Australian. Many of the cast and the director himself are Australian and the entirety of filming was done down under.



8. Doss was not beaten up by his fellow recruits Fort Jackson

Interestingly one of the things that stopped Desmond Doss's story being told in a film, was his insistence on accuracy. The film could have been made decades before and names like Audie Murphy were in the frame to star as Doss, but it was never to be due in part to the insistence upon accuracy. With that in mind (looking here at 4,5 and 9) it really is quite puzzling that some details are just not true in Hacksaw Ridge. One of them is the training scene, almost reminiscent of Pvt Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, in many ways Doss's experience was quite similar. Other recruits really did not like him, he was certainly insulted and bullied for his non violence and his Seventh Day Adventist beliefs. However characters and events are sort of fudged together  and he was never beaten up. Can we blame the moviemakers? We could, but these fictional embellishments do help to tell the story in a concise way. Also maybe it would never have been told if perfection to truth was the only objective.



9. Desmond Doss did not face a court martial

There's a completely fictional scene in Hacksaw Ridge where Desmond Doss faces a court martial for refusing to bear arms. However like point 8 above there's a lot of a sort of corrupted purification of the truth. The court martial did not happen at all, it certainly was true that Doss was threatened with a court martial, it is also true that his father a veteran of the Great War did intercede on his behalf. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that Doss may well have been court martialed for his beliefs and his non violence. He may well have had a similar experience as depicted in Hacksaw Ridge but nevertheless it just didn't happen.

10. Desmond Doss had a hard life after the war

Although his heroism is remembered in the names of institutions and roads across the United States, his heroism in the Pacific Theater did not translate into fortune. The sniper wound in his arm put paid to the idea of a return to carpentry. In addition he had contracted tuberculosis on Leyte which he received treatment for 5 and a half years. Later he would suffer an over dose of antibiotics and lose his hearing entirely. Despite all these trials and tribulations he fathered a son and lived to the age of 87 dying in 2006.

Recommended Reading:

Desmond Doss .com a great source of information about the war hero and a great FAQs around the story

Desmond Doss Conscientious Objector: The Story of an Unlikely Hero books on Amazon

Wikipedia page on Hacksaw Ridge

Wikipedia page on Desmond Doss

Telegraph Hacksaw Ridge: the extraordinary true story of Desmond Doss, the war hero who refused to kill

History vs Hollywood Hacksaw Ridge 

Recommended Watching:

10 Biggest Hacksaw Ridge MOVIE MISTAKES You Didn't See | Hacksaw Ridge Goofs on YouTube

Generation War on Netflix is really good

English title for Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter

Update January 2021 no longer on Netflix and not available on Prime Video.

Well I thought it was good...

 ~Currently~ on Netflix there is a subtitled German war drama series called Generation War and it's really good. It focuses on the lives of 5 German friends in World War 2 and their different paths through the war from 1941 until the end. I don't really want to dissect every aspect nor give away the whole plot, this is just meant as a recommendation of a series that I think is really worth watching.

The 5 friends; Charlotte (Miriam Stein), Friedhelm Winter (Tom Schilling), Greta Müller (Katharina Schüttler), Viktor Goldstein (Ludwig Trepte) and Wilhelm Winter (Volker Bruch), all take different paths in the conflict. The Wilhelm brothers go to the Eastern Front and fight in the battle of Kursk, Charlotte becomes a nurse in a military field hospital, Greta becomes a renowned singer and entertainer and her boyfriend Viktor (who is Jewish) is taken away presumably to the concentration camps.

Titled: "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" in the original German meaning "Our Mothers, our Fathers" the miniseries is a deeply personal look at the conflict and it's effects. This is a war production about people, the events of the war so integral to the story telling, are still somehow in the back ground the focus is upon the 5. In this sense it is fascinating to revel in how individuals acted in these situations. This is also a very controversial part of Generation War, there is criticism that the attitudes contained were ahistorical and that patriotism, antisemitism and Nazism would have been more evident. I don't really know what to make of that debate, was everyone in wartime Germany a Nazi, fully aware of the horrors perpetrated? If you think the answer is yes I suspect, you might this film troubling. If you think the answer is no then you might find comfort in the idea of the innocence of the 5. Personally I'm on the fence, I don't think the question is that simple and I just enjoyed it for what it is, fiction...

Germans 'going over the top' at the battle of Kursk scene

In terms of combat scenes, they are hugely compelling. The action on the Eastern Front centres around the Wilhelm brothers and their experiences in the Wehrmacht. It tends to be smaller squad based warfare, rather than huge epic battle scenes. This serves to make the experience more tangible and real, as you see the German soldiers fighting field by field, street by street and house by house against the soldiers and tanks of the determined Red Army. The cinematography of the action scenes is superb and it's easy to get a very real feel of quite how terrifying combat was in the war against the Soviet Union. Of course combat is the only thing that happens but like I wrote above I don't want to give the plot away and this is a war film blog. But the other parts are just as good.

What do you think? let me know below, for me it's good to see a war series on Netflix although this is only 3 parts. It's very refreshing to see the focus be on individuals rather than the mission or the war itself. German productions on World War Two are so rare and even if some might criticise the story line for being revisionist in it's portrayal, it's still a great drama and excellent tv.

25 year anniversary edition of Schindler's List, see the HD trailer here

25 years, it really doesn't seem that long ago but Stephen Spielberg's classic WW2 holocaust movie Schindler's List came out in 1993,  it's been a quarter of a century!! To mark this special occasion, Universal Pictures have remastered the film and it will be released in cinemas in the US and Canada (not in the UK? and elsewhere?) on December the 7th.

Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) and Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley)

Obviously 25 years is a long time in terms of film and cinematography so Schindler's List will be re-released in stunning 4K. So will it be available to stream? At the moment it's not clear whether it will be, I think it's clear that it will be but will it be Netflix or Amazon or something else... Although it must be said that the original film is currently available on Amazon Prime Video in the UK, so if you can't wait till next year.

In case you don't know what the film is, haven't seen the full movie or indeed the trailer. Schindler's List tells the story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler in occupied Poland during World War 2. The plot line basically is that Schindler takes in Jews to work in his factory and treats them well, saving them from the Krakow ghetto or even worse the concentration camps and certain death. Based around real events, the dramatisation does follow the story of the 1200 Jews saved by Oskar, a real hero. It's also a massively important film because the holocaust is not often the subject of blockbusting movies with all star casts. Probably one of the most important war movies ever made, the fact that it will be re-released goes to show it's continuing importance in bringing the horrors of Nazi Germany to the public's attention.

Here is the trailer in HD of the remastered classic:




If you're more war films to stream, please check out my guide to war movies on Amazon Prime Video and my list of war films on Netflix.

World War 2 films on UK TV this weekend (26/5/18-27/5/2018)

There's really not a great deal of war films on UK tv this weekend, but I did this post last week and it was fairly well received, so I thought I'd do it again anyway... So here's the 2 offerings, which seems a bit paltry for us war movie fans, don't you think?

Guns of Navarone
Spike, Saturday 25th May, 15:45.

Another British classic, the story revolves around a group of Allied commandos tasked with the important mission of taking out 2 land based guns that thwart Allied naval efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Year of production: 1961, age rating: PG, running time: 2h 50m. Starring: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and Stanley Baker. Director: J. Lee Thompson.

Movies poster for The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen

Spike Sunday 26th May, 18:00. 

Set in WW2, Allied command dreams up a suicidal mission for a small group to infiltrate Nazi-occupied Brittany and raid a meeting of senior German officers giving the Allies the upper hand for D-Day. This task falls to a dozen of the worst convicts in the US Army, who are offered pardons if the  mission is a success. 

Year of production: 1967, age rating: 15, running time 1h 30m. Starring: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson and Jim Brown. Director: Robert Aldrich. 

Four brilliant World War 2 films on UK TV this weekend (19/5/18-20/5/2018)

I thought I'd take a break from writing about war films that are currently streaming and have a look at some of the movies available on tv to watch this weekend. I must say I was pleasantly surprised, there's some really good movies to watch from friday night right through to sunday. Without any further adieu here's the list:

Saving Private Ryan:
Sky One, Saturday 19th May, 21:00. 

This is probably on of the greatest World War 2 films ever made and the opening scene is the definitive D-Day cinema scene, if you haven't seen it, it's fantastic, visceral and so immersive you really should watch it. You can easily find this Steven Spielberg classic in lots of greatest war movies lists and for very good reason, it's awesome.

If you don't know much about the film here's a quick run down. Set in World War 2 the films begins at Omaha Beach with the D-Day landings. The film then follows the exploits of a small group of G.I.s on a mission to bring Private Ryan back as his 3 other brothers had been killed in action.

Year of production: 1998, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 50m. Starring: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns,
Matt Damon and Tom Sizemore. Director: Steven Spielberg.

The Dam Busters:
Film 4, Sunday 20th May, 16:20. 

A British war film classic, poignant as this week marks 75 years since the actual attack on German dams in World War 2. The film tells the story of no.617 squadron of the RAF, who were tasked with delivering experimental bouncing bombs developed by Barnes Wallis. With the aim to destroy vital dams in Germany's industrial regions, flooding valleys and massively disrupting Nazi Germany's war time production.

Year of production: 1955, age rating: U, running time: 2h 50m. Starring: Richard Todd, Michael Redgrave, Ursula Jeans and Basil Sydney. Director: Michael Anderson.

A Bridge Too Far:
Spike, Saturday 19th May, 15:50. 

In my opinion the best World War Two movie ever made. Based around the real Operation Market
Garden, which was an ambitious Allied plan to scythe through the German front lines capture channel ports and greatly reduce the length of the war.

Year of production: 1977, age rating 15, running time: 2h 34m. Starring: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine and Sean Connery. Director: Richard Attenborough


Guns of Navarone
Spike, Sunday 20th May, 17:50.

Another British classic, the story revolves around a group of Allied commandos tasked with the important mission of taking out 2 land based guns that thwart Allied naval efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Year of production: 1961, age rating: PG, running time: 2h 50m. Starring: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and Stanley Baker. Director: J. Lee Thompson.

For other war films ideas please check out some of my other posts: 
Every war film currently on Netflix UK in 1 list.
List of the best WW2 films available on Netflix.
Best current war movies on Amazon video.

List of the best World War 2 movies to stream on Netflix right now (May 2018)

Brad Pitt stars in Fury following a
WW2 Sherman crew

World War Two what a great topic for a war movie, I was really excited to go through the Netflix catalogue and see what great WW2 films there were only, there's not that many sadly. I had thought about doing a top 10 or a top 20 or something of the sort but alas, I only seem to find 7 and actually most of them I haven't (yet) watched. No use complaining I guess, what can Netflix UK offer? well of the 7 there certainly is some variety, they aren't all Hollywood blockbusters, there's a Russian production and an Indian one. The earliest two date from war time and the latest are barely a couple of years since release. There's some big name actors and some you've probably never heard of. It's a fairly good if short selection of war genre cinema to enjoy. I'm going to rank the films into some sort of order, like I said I haven't seen them all, where I have I'll add in some of my own comments and opinions, other than that find out below the film title, the main actors in the production, the director it's screen time and age rating. 



Hacksaw Ridge

One of the most influential war movies of recent times. Nominated for various awards. The premise is perhaps a little unusual a war film, the lead part being about a pacifist war hero. Nevertheless bravery and courage are familiar themes and despite the morals of the story this is a bona fide action filled war film. I've included the YouTube trailer below, for a good glimpse at this epic movie. 

Year of production: 2016, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 19m. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey and Teresa Palmer. Director: Mel Gibson.



Fury

I must admit I approached this film with a little scepticism, I'm not Brad Pitt's biggest fan anyway and I was never taken by Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. However I was very pleasantly surprised the movie is more on the sort of action scale of things and less gritty, but this is far from a cheesy action movie and is a very good war film. It follows the crew of a Sherman M4A2 (76) nicknamed Fury, during warfare in Germany in 1945. 

Year of production: 2014, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 14m. Starring: David Ayer, Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf. Director: David Ayer.

Stalingrad
2013, 15, 2h 10m. During the epic World War 2 battle for Stalingrad a group of Red Army soldiers holes up in a house. Starring: Pyotr Fyodorov, Dmitriy Lysenkov, Alexey Barabash and Andrey Smolyakov. Director: Fedor Bondarchuk.
(not to be confused with the 1993 film of the same name.)

The Fighting Seabees
1944, U, 1h 39m. Wartime movie about US construction battalions, known as Seabees. Despite their civilian status the workers soon find themselves armed and facing the Japanese enemy. Starring: John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Dennis O'Keefe as Lt. Cmdr. Robert Yarrow and William Frawley. Director: Edward Ludwig.

Pimpernel Smith
1941, U, 2h 1m. Posing as an Archaeologist, the protagonist secretly gets people out of wartime Nazi Germany. Starring: Leslie Howard, Francis L. Sullivan and Mary Morris. Director Leslie Howard.

Rangoon
2017, Guidance, 2h 32m. Female daredevil entertainer, goes from entertaining troops to involved in the action in this Indian production. Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut. Director: Vishal Bhardwaj.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage

I watched this recently because it's a war film that I hadn't seen, I can't say much else about attracted me to it. I think was for a good reason, there's some fairly good action scenes, the CGI is good but not a scratch on other Hollywood efforts and more recent video games. This sort of theme carries through all of it, the acting is in no way bad nor is it good and it's hard to have a real empathy for the characters and their plight. On the plus side, naval war films are something of a rarity and this is certainly a good attempt at addressing that balance. It's probably worth a watch, but I'd struggle to recommend it wholeheartedly. 

Year of production: 2016, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 10m. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane and James Remar. Director: Mario Van Peebles.