Gibson comes out firing through the fog, smoke and stink of war in the ‘extraordinary true story’ about war hero Desmond T Doss
Mel Gibson isn’t the sort of film-maker who uses spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down. The director of grisly meditations Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto and now Hacksaw Ridge is more the kind to pour a bottle of spirits into an open wound, then throw a match on it.
Gibson is terrific at painting blood-stained moving pictures of humans caught in primitive horrors that trigger profound repercussions – from the end of the Mayan civilisation, to Jesus hanging from a cross. He also exhibits great skill geographically orienting audiences, finding visual clarity in chaos.
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