Friday, December 23, 2016

Movie Review: HACKSAW RIDGE (2016) A


Unfortunately I was familiar with the story line of the movie before I saw it in the theater. So it didn't get into the feelings (and pain) of the men involved because I was familiar with the plot.

Netflix had a special documentary film that went into the details of the Japanese defenses using three ridges and special tunnels built into the ridges on Okinawa. Watching the frontal attack by the Americans on the ridge seemed like foolish strategy considering the defenses the Japanese set up on other ridges as well.  It seems that we could have taken Okinawa without the loss of tens of thousands of men.  And our plans to attack the Japanese Islands in November of 1945 seems insane. It would have cost millions of lives on both sides. (But that is a different story altogether).

From Rotten Tomatoes: HACKSAW RIDGE is the extraordinary true story of Desmond Doss [Andrew Garfield] who, in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle of WWII, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. He was the only American soldier in WWII to fight on the front lines without a weapon, as he believed that while the war was justified, killing was nevertheless wrong. As an army medic, he single-handedly evacuated the wounded from behind enemy lines, braved fire while tending to soldiers and was wounded by a grenade and hit by snipers. Doss was the first conscientious objector to ever earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.

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