A hack saw a ridge ...

I wouldn't have called Mel Gibson a hack before Monday. But then I saw Hacksaw Ridge.

Now, "hack" is about the only word that seems appropriate.

Have you seen this movie?

Yes, you. I'm talking to you.

It's an hour of maudlin, sentimental slop involving dull wartime romances, platitudes about personal beliefs, perfunctory training montages and about as much aw-shucks dorkiness from Andrew Garfield as a person can handle -- not to mention some pretty outrageous overacting by Hugo Weaving and Rachel Griffiths -- followed by an hour of extreme violence that reaches nearly Kill Bill levels of comic absurdity, except it's not played as comedy.

Essentially, it's an hour of Gibson's heartfelt religious crap followed by an hour of Gibson's sadistic violence crap.

In order to follow through on the implications for the ellipses in my title, I might speculate that the reason Gibson wanted to make this movie was the titular ridge in Okinawa, which required U.S. soldiers to scale it using rope ladders in order to attack the Japanese. In my somewhat limited understanding of world conflicts, it appears to be a unique bit of topography to have to grapple with in order to carry out an attack. Reason enough for someone to make a movie, I think.

But who am I kidding? Gibson made this movie in order to keep drilling away on two long-standing obsessions: Christianity, and the outrageous suffering of the human body.

I won't get into a point-by-point analysis of what works (little of it) and doesn't work (most of it) about Hacksaw Ridge. Really, I'm more interested in how Gibson's filmmaking skills seem to have departed him in the ten years since he made Apocalypto, an enthralling, ambitious, original action movie that touched on some of his obsessions but was more interested in delivering a stupendously entertaining movie. Even when Gibson was making movies I did not particularly care for -- such as The Passion of the Christ -- he was showing off a truly advanced understanding of how to use the tools of cinema to make us feel. We may not have liked what we were feeling in Christ, but we couldn't deny its visceral power.

That has utterly dissipated in Hacksaw Ridge, a flat movie filled with stock characters.

Now before you get too up in arms about this statement -- since I may have gotten you wrong and you may have liked this movie -- I will grant you that the battle sequences do involve a high degree of difficulty. Bodies are catching fire and flipping in a ballet of chaos and destruction. Viscera is exiting bodies and heads are popping off. Penises are flying through the air. Okay, some of that stuff may not have happened. But Gibson is so fixated on corporeal dismemberment that I wouldn't be surprised if you told me they did. It would have been really hard to do, and to Gibson's credit, he does give us a good sense of the battlefield dynamics -- who is where, what's at stake, what were the unique complications of this particular battle. It's highly orchestrated chaos.

But to what end? The tools of cinema only serve us to the extent that they deepen the film's themes or tap into something essential about its narrative or the purpose of that narrative. Since Gibson's film does not do that -- and in fact runs contrary to that, as a queasy celebration of violence in a film about pacifism -- it seems like misplaced, and therefore superfluous, and therefore useless, and therefore even aesthetically unsatisfying, technique.

One other point I want to touch on about Hacksaw Ridge is its cast. There is a "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" quality to them. I'll explain what I mean by that in a minute, but first I'll tell you that I almost called this post "Give me your tired," as that would have also functioned as an indictment of the movie's cliched banalities.

What I mean by that is that it's a truly odd cast, composed largely of people it seemed like Gibson must have had to pick off the scrap heap. And before you take umbrage at that characterization, let me clarify it further. Few of the people Gibson cast are not A-listers, or at least, very recent A-listers. But they are so oddly chosen for their roles that they make it seem like Gibson, at this stage of his pariah-hood, only had a certain number of A-listers available to him, and had to fit those square pegs into round holes.

The most glaring in this regard is Vince Vaughn, who plays a drill sergeant -- and then, I guess, an actual sergeant. (Is there a difference? I don't know.) It's not that Vaughn cannot play drama at all -- one of my favorite Vaughn performances is a dramatic role in The Cell -- but that he is uniquely unqualified to play a drill sergeant. It's not that he can't yell -- anyone can yell -- but that he does not seem the least bit intimidating when he does so. As a clear sign of how Gibson did not know what to do with him, he includes an ill-advised comedic moment involving the character in which Vaughn mistakes one of his grunts for a Native American and proceeds to force the grunt to join him in that "traditional" Native American war cry involving repeatedly touching your open palm to your open mouth while making the cry. What's even stranger about it is that it might be literally the movie's only attempt at a joke.

Then what's noticeable about this cast is how many Australians it features. That can't just be a result of the number of Australians available in Hollywood. It must be a representation of either who has stuck by Gibson or who is willing to work with him. Not only do you have the aforementioned Weaving and Griffiths -- the latter of whom I didn't recognize at first, indicating at least how she's been off my personal radar, if not out of the public eye -- but also Sam Worthington and Teresa Palmer. Palmer is a lovely presence and I would call her A-list adjacent, but Worthington's brief heat after Avatar has long since cooled. To such an extent that he sticks out, even if his performance is not actually worth speaking ill of. To such an extent that I spent the whole movie trying to remember the actor's name. To think that I might not be able to remember the name of the star of Avatar, which came out only seven years ago.

Garfield is the most whole-heartedly A-list of the cast, in the prime of his career if ever there was a prime. He's 33 and figures to have as many exciting projects still ahead of him as behind him. But his was possibly my least favorite performance. He's all neck and teeth, a gawky southerner whose earnestness is only bested by his politeness. Those character traits do not automatically turn me off, but the way Garfield plays them is just so "aw shucks gee whillickers" big that it truly perturbed me. I wished Jim Cavaziel had been young enough to play the role, even though I don't like him much better. (That seems like who Gibson would have chosen in his perfect world.)

It's not that Gibson's films have always challenged the status quo, either. That's not what I needed to see. In fact, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto might have seemed like deviations from what started out as a pretty conventional directing career. His 1993 debut, The Man Without a Face, was a well-made, populist coming-of-age story, one that actually had an excess of humanism (and no violence, as I recall it). And Braveheart was high on the body count, but it did not feel indulgent in its violence, resulting in an incredibly popular film that went on to win best picture. These movies did not prove Gibson's daring, just his solid craftsmanship.

You could say that Hacksaw Ridge still demonstrates solid craftsmanship, in places. But its total lack of complication and daring is dispiriting, and undermines that craftsmanship. The Gibson we got in 2004 and 2006 with Christ and Apocalypto -- before he was rightly drummed out of Hollywood -- was a man making bold choices that only didn't work, if they didn't work, for reasons of tone or intent. Now that he's made another film like the two that started his career, at least in terms of their attempt to function as mainstream products, it feels like he's lost both his voice and some of his technical ability.

Because Apocalypto demonstrated such a command of the various elements that go into making a film, I really thought the next Gibson joint would be something astonishing -- and I longed for it, on some level, even as I grew to loathe the man himself.

Now that he's back, I feel like instead of a type of visionary, we just have another Hollywood hack.

Mel Gibson does not hate Mexicans

Or so would be my conclusion after last Thursday's viewing of Get the Gringo, in which he surrounds himself almost entirely by Mexican actors and actresses.

Then again, it could just be because he's Catholic and so are they. 

Having grabbed your attention with that lightning rod headline, now I want to bait and switch you and talk about what I really would have called this post if I hadn't been engaging in a cheap ploy to grab your attention:

Memorable settings: Get the Gringo

A famous person once said that there's nothing new under the sun, and that famous person certainly had a point. We see it all the time in the movies: things under the sun that do not feel particularly new.

Setting aside the obvious examples like familiar narratives and plot structures, one thing you don't see very often is a truly new setting. Even in movies set on other planets, those other planets usually bear a striking resemblance to other other planets you've seen in other movies.

So I was glad to say that Get the Gringo, which Gibson co-wrote along with director Adrian Grunberg, does indeed give us a setting that's quite unlike anything I've seen before.

It isn't telling you too much to reveal that Gibson's character gets arrested in Mexico in the film's first five minutes. His next destination is a prison, but it's not the kind of Mexican prison you may be imagining as you read these words. If I were to read those words myself without seeing Get the Gringo, I'd imagine something not hugely different from an American prison. Except that where the American prison might have this kind of hospital-like immaculate quality, the Mexican prison would be overrun with rats and have toilets that hadn't been cleaned in five years.

That's not some kind of expression of cultural supremacy, mind you -- it's a recognition of the kind of thing Hollywood traditionally does to "Mexican up" a location. Well, this location is plenty "Mexicaned up," but in a way I hadn't expected.

Essentially, the prison that functions as the main location for Get the Gringo is somewhere between a noisy bazaar and a small city. There are no individual cells. The entire prison population is poured into a large open space in which dozens or even hundreds of examples of a fledgling economic system have arisen: convenience stores, restaurants, the shack you visit to get your heroin fix. It's essentially like a giant walled-in ghetto, only distinguishable as a prison at all because the walls are policed by men with sniper rifles, and there are various access points where guards can check in visitors (and even check out inmates, under certain circumstances, as we soon discover). What makes it seem even more like a slice of everyday life in a really, really poor area is that it's not just a bunch of men doing time for their crimes. Whole families live in this prison. In at least one case we learn about, both parents were convicted of a crime so the child just came along too. In some other cases, even fewer members of the family than that may be guilty.

There's something oddly liberating about this environment, in a sense. If you have some money -- which it seems that everyone does -- you can just lounge in a cafe with a soda and a taco. There are plenty of sights and sounds to occupy you, especially on the weekends, when visitors are allowed to freely enter the prison for what amounts to mass conjugal visits. (In one of the film's many examples of opportunistic economy, we see men charging kids to go inside a tent and have sex with each other. One of the more hilarious moments in this setting involves a half-dozen tents, sitting basically in the middle of the main flow of traffic, grooving back and forth as their occupants get it on and a burly man stands outside to prevent them from being interrupted. A paying customer has earned certain privileges, you see.)

And if you do have enough money, you can even secure yourself a location to sleep -- a "location" may be more of an accurate description than a true bed. But at least a paid-for location to which you claim some right in the skewed but still recognizable morality of this particular world.

Of course, it's doubtful you would actually choose to live there, even if you were penniless and this were as good a patch of ground to sleep on as any. With such a teeming mass of people and so little a structured attempt to differentiate them, you'd be a sitting duck to anyone who has a grudge against you. Murders would seem to carry even fewer consequences within the walls of this kind of prison, and even if they did, you'd have to have prison guards who weren't corrupt to hold the guilty parties accountable. More than likely, a payoff would leave the guilty party in the clear, and some of these inmates claim a pretty enviable standard of living as a result of their success at manipulating the prevailing economic system.

The long and the short of it is, this makes a very interesting environment for essentially only a single gringo (Gibson) to attempt to survive and thrive. I read a review that describes his character as "resourceful," and that's where the setting truly comes into play. We are learning the rules of this unruly environment just as he is, so it's interesting to see him figure out how to work the place to his advantage -- and we wonder if we might rise to the occasion under those circumstances and do the same thing for ourselves.

Anyway, Get the Gringo is worth a watch. It's clever and funny and gripping, all at the right moments, creating just the right tone to carry us through. And if you weren't that satisfied with Mel Gibson's previous attempt at a second comeback, last year's oddball The Beaver, this one should deliver a lot closer to the kind of thing you were looking for.

I should stop for a moment to acknowledge what I hope goes without saying: that Gibson does not deserve our good will. It's hard for me to even keep straight all the reasons we should despise him, though they are all valid.

Fortunately, this exciting and fun little movie comes to us pretty much guilt-free. It failed to get a theatrical release, although it did play in something like nine cities on exactly one night. So if you're getting it on Netflix streaming, you aren't really contributing to its financial success in any meaningful way, are you?

And Gibson can still be a compelling screen presence, as he is here -- seeming to be having more fun than he's had in a decade. (Speaking of liberating, maybe knowing that the whole world hates you gives you a certain freedom just to try to enjoy yourself.)

You could choose not to see Get the Gringo because you want to stick it to Mel, and I would support you in that decision. Or, you could just leave your reservations at the door and choose to be entertained.

The vigilante

Starring in a film for the first time in eight years -- or, more importantly, the first time since he went on a drunken, anti-Semitic rant -- Mel Gibson decided to return to something familiar.

Something very, very familiar.

In fact, I didn't realize how familiar until a Facebook friend of mine posted a question in his status update earlier in the week. This guy is a working journalist who, I suppose, was trying to come up with a story related to the release of Gibson's Edge of Darkness. I'm only assuming that, because this was the exact phrasing:

"A little pop culture help, please: can anyone think of any other movies in which a dad wreaks bloody vengeful havoc after his child or wife is hurt and/or murdered? A la Taken, Death Wish? What movies am I missing? And no, I am not curating a film festival."

What turned me on to the Gibson angle was the responses to this post. One commenter said "Isn't that the plot of every Mel Gibson movie ever made?"

The answer is, yes, pretty much. With the exception of Bird on a Wire and Forever Young.

(And sorry to steal your idea for a story, if this was in fact what your idea was, o friend of mine. But blogging anonymity prevents me from giving you any more credit than I already have. Besides, you'll never read this anyway. Nor will many other people.)

Let's consider, chronologically, all the way back to when Mel Gibson was just a glint in superstardom's eye:

1) Mad Max (1979, George Miller). Gibson plays a police officer whose family is murdered by a gang in retaliation for the death of one of its members. After this, Gibson's Max becomes mad.

2) The Road Warrior (1981, George Miller). Same Max, still mad.

3) Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985, George Miller & George Ogilvie). Same Max, but not quite as mad anymore. Tina Turner guest stars.

4) Lethal Weapon (1987, Richard Donner). Gibson may have become something of a jolly court jester in later Lethal Weapons, but not here. This deadly serious movie features Gibson as a suicidal, nearly psychopathic cop who is stewing in his own misery after the death of his wife. Will act crazy for food.

5) Lethal Weapon 2 (1989, Richard Donner). Martin Riggs is a lot funnier in the second installment, but he still gets a chance to go fist-swinging, gun-blazing crazy after they deposit his new girlfriend at the bottom of the bay.

6) Braveheart (1995, Mel Gibson). William Wallace becomes a freedom fighter after his intended is murdered, but don't think his eyes don't go into the back of his head in apoplectic rage in a couple slightly less noble moments.

7) Ransom (1996, Ron Howard). This is probably the first one everyone thinks of, though neither his wife nor son is actually killed here. However, Tom Mullen gets so pissed about his son's kidnapping that he actually puts a ransom on the kidnappers. My friends and I were saying "Gimme back my son!" in loud, spittle-filled Gibson rage for several years after that.

8) Payback (1999, Brian Helgeland). In this film, Gibson is perhaps more a strict vigilante than in any of the others -- what prevents it from fitting the terms of my friend's query is that his "payback," from what I remember/can glean from the internet, doesn't have anything to do with a wife or a child. However, I've called this post "The vigilante," so it certainly fits into my own modification of the theme.

9) The Patriot (2000, Roland Emmerich). Gibson's Benjamin Martin is a pacifist until one of his sons is killed by the British during a skirmish at his plantation. After that he gets all angry with his muskets and gunpowder.

10) Signs (2002, M. Night Shyamalan). Yep, this even fits into the theme, sort of. Although Gibson's Graham Hess is a reverend and most certainly a man of Godly non-violence, his wife was killed by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel (Shyamalan), and it's at least implied that Hess wants to do this man physical harm.

11) Edge of Darkness (2010, Martin Campbell). I don't know if Gibson's detective goes all Charles Bronson on anyone after his activist daughter is murdered, but the hopelessness and screaminess of a lot of his dialogue from the ads certainly suggests that possibility, doesn't it?

Okay, so it's not every movie he's in. But 11 movies is more than a trend. And besides, it's not really satire if you don't exaggerate a little bit.

Now, five movies in which Mel Gibson should have played the grieving dad/husband:

1) Mystic River (2003, Clint Eastwood). "Is that my daughter in there? IS THAT MY DAUGHTER IN THEY-UH?!?"

2) Taken (2009, Pierre Morel). "What I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

3) A Time to Kill (1996, John Grisham). But he'd need a race change. "YES they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!"

4) The Limey (1999, Steven Soderbergh). "You tell him, you tell him I'm coming. Tell him I'm FUCKING coming!"

5) Gladiator (2000, Ridley Scott). "At my signal, unleash hell."