Honestly, the first time you see Andrew Garfield on screen in Hacksaw Ridge, he doesn’t look like a guy who belongs in a foxhole. He’s lanky. He has that goofy, wide-eyed grin. He looks like he should be delivering a paper or maybe pining over a girl in a 1940s soda shop.
But that’s exactly why the Andrew Garfield war movie works as well as it does.
When people search for "that Andrew Garfield war movie," they are almost always looking for the 2016 juggernaut Hacksaw Ridge. It’s the film that finally stopped everyone from just seeing him as "the guy who was Spider-Man for a bit" and forced the world to see him as a heavyweight dramatic actor. It’s a brutal, bloody, and deeply confusing piece of cinema directed by Mel Gibson. It tells the story of Desmond Doss, a real-life Seventh-day Adventist who went into the meat grinder of Okinawa without a single bullet to defend himself.
He saved 75 men. Single-handedly.
Most war movies are about the thrill of the hunt or the brotherhood of the gun. This one is about a guy who refused to even touch a rifle. It sounds like a Hollywood fable, but the reality of what happened on that ridge is actually weirder than the movie.
The Desmond Doss Story: Fact vs. Hollywood Fiction
Most people think movies "punch up" the truth to make it more exciting. With the Andrew Garfield war movie, it was actually the opposite. Mel Gibson and the writers had to leave out some of Doss's real-life heroics because they figured audiences simply wouldn't believe them.
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Think about that.
The real Desmond Doss was wounded by a grenade and then, while being carried off on a stretcher, saw a guy who was worse off than him. He crawled off the stretcher, told the medics to take the other guy, and then got shot by a sniper while waiting for them to come back. He eventually crawled 300 yards back to safety with a compound fracture in his arm.
In the film, some of these details were shifted around for pacing. But the core—the part where he lowers men down a 400-foot cliff one by one while praying, "Lord, please help me get one more"—is 100% documented history.
What the Movie Got Right (and Kinda Wrong)
- The Court Martial: In the film, there’s a high-stakes scene where Doss is almost sent to military prison for refusing to carry a weapon. In real life, he never actually went to a full court-martial, though his officers definitely tried to pressure him out of the Army with a Section 8 discharge (claiming he was mentally unfit).
- The Marriage: The movie shows him missing his wedding because he was in the brig. In reality, he married Dorothy Schutte before he ever went into active service.
- The Father Figure: Hugo Weaving plays Doss's father as a broken, violent WWI vet. This is mostly true, but the specific scene where the father pulls a gun on his wife was actually an altercation between Doss’s father and his uncle.
Why Andrew Garfield Was the Only Choice
There is a specific kind of "gentle strength" that Garfield brings to his roles. You saw it in Silence (which he filmed right around the same time) and you definitely saw it in Hacksaw Ridge.
Garfield actually spent a lot of time with the real Doss family and even visited the locations in Lynchburg, Virginia, to get the accent and the "purity" of the character right. He didn't want to play a "badass." He wanted to play a man of conviction.
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The physical toll was also massive. If you watch the "making of" footage, you see Garfield actually dragging actors twice his size across the dirt. It wasn't all camera tricks and stunt doubles. He wanted that visceral, exhausted look that only comes from actually doing the work.
Reception and the 2017 Oscar Race
The film was a massive comeback for Mel Gibson, but for Garfield, it was a coronation. He earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He didn't win (Casey Affleck took it for Manchester by the Sea), but it shifted his career trajectory permanently.
It’s a movie that balances two extremes. The first half is a soft, almost Spielbergian romance and training camp drama. The second half is a literal descent into hell. The sound design alone—which won an Oscar—is enough to give you a headache if you watch it with the volume too high. It’s loud, it’s chaotic, and it’s meant to make you feel as terrified as Doss was.
Beyond Okinawa: Is there another Andrew Garfield war movie?
While Hacksaw Ridge is the big one, it’s not his only brush with conflict-heavy cinema.
Early in his career, he appeared in Lions for Lambs (2007) alongside Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. It’s more of a political war drama than a "war movie," but it dealt heavily with the ethics of the war in Afghanistan.
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And for those looking ahead, Garfield is currently attached to The Uprising, a 2026 historical epic directed by Paul Greengrass. While it’s set during the 14th-century Peasants' Revolt rather than a modern world war, it’s expected to be a massive, gritty "war-adjacent" epic. He'll be playing Wat Tyler, the leader of the rebellion. If you liked the intensity of Hacksaw Ridge, The Uprising is likely going to be right up your alley.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Buffs
If you’re planning a rewatch or diving into this story for the first time, keep these things in mind to get the most out of the experience:
- Watch the Documentary First: Check out The Conscientious Objector (2004). It features interviews with the real Desmond Doss. Seeing the actual man talk about these events makes Garfield's performance feel even more nuanced.
- Compare the "Silence" Performance: If you want to see Garfield's range, watch Silence and Hacksaw Ridge back-to-back. He plays two men of faith in impossible situations, but the performances are wildly different.
- Check the Soundstage Facts: Interestingly, most of this "American" war movie was filmed in Australia. The "Hacksaw Ridge" itself was a massive set built in a dairy farm outside of Sydney.
The legacy of the Andrew Garfield war movie isn't just about the blood or the action. It's about the fact that sometimes, the bravest person on a battlefield is the one who refuses to fight. It’s a rare film that manages to be a "war movie" while being explicitly anti-violence.
To dive deeper into the history, you should look up the official Medal of Honor citation for Desmond Doss. Reading the dry, military language used to describe a man sprinting into machine-gun fire to save his "brothers" provides a stark, haunting contrast to the cinematic spectacle we see on screen.