Trailer
Plot summary
In Lynchburg, Virginia, Desmond Doss grows up Seventh-day Adventist, and after a boyhood fight nearly kills his brother he holds to the commandment against killing. Years later he brings an injured man to a hospital and meets Dorothy Schutte, a nurse; he tells her he wants to work in medicine. After Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, he enlists as a combat medic, a choice his father Tom, a veteran of the First World War, opposes. He and Dorothy become engaged before he ships out. In basic training with the 77th Infantry Division he handles the physical demands but the other soldiers treat him as an outcast because he will not touch a rifle and will not train on Saturdays. Sergeant Howell and Captain Glover try to have him discharged, then to drive him out with hard labor.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Desmond Doss's story sat unmade for 14 years in development, and producers had been chasing it for decades before that, among them the decorated war hero turned actor Audie Murphy and the producer Hal B. Wallis.
- Producer Bill Mechanic wanted Mel Gibson to bring the same mix of violence and faith he had used in The Passion of the Christ, but Gibson turned the film down twice, just as he had first turned down Braveheart, and only agreed nearly a decade later, in November 2014.
- With Australian tax incentives withdrawn, the production had to qualify as an Australian film to get subsidies, and it managed it because Gibson had spent his early years in Australia and most of the cast, including Hugo Weaving, Sam Worthington, Rachel Griffiths and Teresa Palmer, were Australian.
- Shooting at Bringelly in New South Wales meant clearing and deforesting more than 500 hectares, which angered environmentalists; the producers had full clearance but were required to replant and rehabilitate part of the land afterwards.
- Bulldozers and backhoes turned a dairy pasture near Sydney into the Okinawa battlefield, and the crew raised a berm right around it so the cameras could swing a full 360 degrees without a eucalyptus tree appearing in the background.
- Sound mixer Kevin O'Connell had been nominated 21 times without winning before Hacksaw Ridge finally brought him an Academy Award, and he said the budget was so tight that he had to use archival recordings of Second World War weapons.
- The real Doss gave up his place on a stretcher to another wounded man, then had his arm broken by a sniper's bullet and crawled 300 yards to safety after five hours alone; Gibson left it out because he thought no audience would believe it.
- The score went through three composers: James Horner was approached first but died in 2015, John Debney took over and had his work rejected shortly before the Venice premiere, and Rupert Gregson-Williams wrote the music that was used.
