‘Hacksaw Ridge’ Critical Roundup: Mel Gibson’s Bloody WWII Drama Earns Praise in Venice 2016
‘Hacksaw Ridge’ Critical Roundup: Mel Gibson’s Bloody WWII Drama Earns Praise in Venice
Gibson's first directorial outing in a decade is as gory as you'd expect.
“Hacksaw Ridge”
Mel Gibson’s “Hacksaw Ridge” was a surprise addition to this year’s Venice Film Festival, instantly provoking curiosity as to how his first directorial effort since 2006’s “Apocalypto” would be received amid so many other autumnal prestige pictures. The answer, at least so far, is pretty well — early reviews from Venice tend toward the favorable.
“It immerses you in the violent madness of war,” writes Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, “and, at the same time, it roots its drama in the impeccable valor of a man who, by his own grace, refuses to have anything to do with war.”Andrew Garfield stars in the WWII drama as Desmond Doss, an army medic and conscientious objector who refused to carry a weapon.
Alonso Duralde of TheWrap is similarly positive, crediting Gibson with creating “some of the most breathtakingly exciting wartime footage in recent memory. They craft a real architecture to this hellish landscape; no matter how chaotic the proceedings, we always know where everyone is in relation to everyone else, and pauses get inserted into the action lest it all become too much to take. (But remember folks, this is a movie about pacifism.)”
Writing for The Guardian, Andrew Pulver “As repellent a figure as many may still find Gibson,” Pulver says, “I have to report he’s absolutely hit ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ out of the park.” As such, he gives it four stars (out of a possible five).
Jessica Kiang is less impressed, giving the film a C and arguing in her Playlistreview that Gibson’s “tale of real-life heroism seems less a celebration of humanist convictions than a glorification of religious intransigence and a declaration of the moral superiority of the faithful over the faithless.”
0 commentaires: