The movie “Doctor Strange” once again answers the ongoing question about making money in Hollywood. Its name recognition (Doctor Strange is another well known Marvel Comic) and massive special effects enough to create a good movie that has a bad script and a bad story? For some movies I have seen in the past, this can sometimes happen, but in my opinion, this did not happen for this movie. The special effects in this film are spectacular throughout but all those special effects do not save what is a muddled and at times a rather stupid story that drags on too long and ends with a time loop scene with some kind of an evil cloud character that I thought did not work as an effective ending.

The story of this film is – a great surgeon, by the name of Dr. Steven Strange, who is almost killed in a car accident and because of the accident he has nerve damage that disables his hands so he can no longer operate. Through another patient who survived major nerve damage and walked again, Strange goes to Nepal to locate a sect that has mastered the art of using the spiritual world to heal the physical world. What follows is Dr. Strange slowly gaining abilities to bend time, space and transportation to different parts of the world through time portals. Of course, this ability also has a downside and there are evil people who have mastered the dark side of this ability, which seemed too much like the dark side of the Force in Star Wars. The actress Tilda Swinton does an effective job with her part as the head of a group of monks who hold the keys to these abilities along with the respected actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, but neither of these two acting performances or Benjamin Cumberbatch who plays Doctor Strange or Rachel McAdams who plays another doctor and Strange’s girlfriend is enough to rescue this mostly ridiculous movie that is all about special effects with very little story. For these reasons, I do not recommend Doctor Strange.

For people who are disturbed by war movies that show extreme battles, horrible violence, gore, and death they should definitely miss this movie. For people who feel that movies about war should never depict any of the most extreme violence that show the harsh reality of war, they should also miss this movie. The John Wayne era of glorifying the horror of war is over forever. War movies should never glorify war, but instead, honor those who died and in some small way try to prevent future wars from ever happening again by accurately showing what war really is. In this regard, Mel Gibson did an outstanding job in his comeback to Hollywood with his direction of this outstanding movie.

For a director filming a war movie, the issue is will always be the same: if you do not show the true horrors of war then ultimately you disrespect all the young men who were slaughtered in battle on both sides. To truly appreciate what so many young men went through in World War 2 or any war, movies like “Hacksaw Ridge” are required to show it the way it really was. In my opinion, in the history of all war movies ever made, this one will rank as one of the best ever filmed, along with Saving Private Ryan that came out in 1998. I also believe that this movie even raised the bar when showing the extreme horror of war and reminds us all that the war in the Pacific was far worse that the war against Germany and Italy in Europe. This is because the Japanese soldiers did not care if they lived or died and they refused to ever surrender. The Japanese religious fanaticism and their belief that surrendering is not an option and would mean that they would lose their honor if they surrendered and their honor was far more important than their own lives. This is the main reason why the Unites States had no choice but to drop two Atomic Bombs on Japan to end the war in the Pacific. A great recent book about this issue is: Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan written by Bill O’Reilly.

The main character of Hacksaw Ridge is Desmond Doss, played excellently by Andrew Garfield who was the first conscientious objectorto ever win the Congressional Medal of Honor. During Bootcamp and the entire time Dos was in the United States Army, he refused to ever carry or even touch a gun, even to the point of facing many years in military prison after a court martial, beatings by his fellow soldiers and being called a coward during his term in the army. Desmond’s reasons for this were because of his childhood and his abusive family where he almost shot his own father to stop him from beating his mother and during a fight with his brother where he almost killed him by hitting him in the head with a brick during a fight. These two events in Desmond’s life changed him forever and made him so religious in his belief in God’s commandments, especially “though shall not kill”, that his only desire after enlisting was to save lives as a medic and never take a life. After the 7th failed attempt to take Hacksaw Ridge which was a battlefield on the Island of Okinawa, Doss remained on the ridge for hours and managed to rescue 75 men from certain death. How a war hero at this level is so largely unknown is a tragedy and unfortunately, the real Desmond Doss never got to see this movie as he died in 2006 at the age of 87.

The remaining cast includes Vince Vaughn who was outstanding as the Boot Camp Sargent and proved that he is an actor who can do both dramatic and comedy roles. Theresa Palmer is also great in her role as the nurse that Desmond Doss meets and eventually marries. Hugo Weaving was outstanding in his role as Desmond’s abusive alcoholic father and Word War 1 veteran who throughout this movie reminded his family that the aftereffects of surviving a war can ruin your life because those bad memories will never go away. What is most amazing about Mel Gibson is his great ability as a director, despite his huge fall from the highest heights of the filmmaking industry 10 years ago due to anti-semitic remarks and alcoholic binges. Gibson’s last war movie that came out in 2002 was also outstanding, “We were Soldiers” and is also one of the greatest war movies ever made and also accurately depicted the realities of war. There is no doubt that Hacksaw Ridge marks a great comeback for Gibson from the very high marks on IMDB and the critical acclaim when the movie was released. One can only hope that Mel Gibson does not make the mistakes he has made in the past because he is one great director.

While watching this great war movie I was reminded of what it must have been like to have been born at the wrong time during World War 2 and find yourself at age 19 fighting as a private in the Marines during the war in the Pacific. Bootcamp can never fully train any young man for an intense close range battle at the magnitude of those who were fought against the Japanese. Machine gun fire from all angles, explosions all around you as you try to advance and then watching others die by gunfire or dismemberment due to an explosion that could have easily killed you. The emotions for all of these young men during this battle and others like it had to include a level of total disbelief realizing their final minutes on earth even more than their own fear of certain death. For the battle for Hacksaw Ridge, the odds or survival seemed like only 10%, which was confirmed from some of the comments as the few survivors climbed down from the ridge. The Japanese dug deep trenches and tunnels underground that survived the intense bombing of the Navy before each attempt to capture Hacksaw Ridge and some of these amazing tunnels were shown in the movie as Desmond Doss tried to escape from the Japanese while trying to rescue some of the wounded.

The movie Hacksaw Ridge is one of the best movies I have ever seen, and almost the equal of Saving Private Ryan. This movie should definitely be nominated for an Academy Award and Gibson should be nominated for best director. I also think that Andrew Garfield should be nominated for best actor.

The premise of this movie is about the important subject of overpopulation and the alarming population growth of the world which has almost doubled since 1970 from 4 billion to now almost 8 billion people. It is obvious that organizations like “The World Heath Organization (WHO)” are working on the world overpopulation problem and WHO is an integral part of the many chase scenes in this movie. Involving the World Health Organization in this movie makes sense because the movie is about solving a series of puzzles that are all about trying to stop some insane scientist from creating a worldwide pandemic that will wipe out half the planet and very quickly fix the population explosion problem which according to this scientist will result in the extinction of all humanity. Fundamentally, is a good idea for a movie. What is a stupid idea for a movie is turning a good idea into a bad idea by complicating it with a ridiculous plot which makes almost no sense, and embedding complex and inane “mystery clues” into paintings and statues that are mostly inside museums all around the world.

There are a whole series of reasons why this movie is stupid and badly made. First of all, why would a mad scientist who is plotting to kill half the planet by creating some disease, hide very complex and ridiculous clues within paintings and other works of art, all around the world? The connections between each of these clues that lead Robert Langdon played by Tom Hanks make almost no sense at all, and how each conclusion and connection is reached by Langdon and his partner in this mystery, Sienna Brooks played by Felicity Jones during the fast-talking conversations they have are completely absurd. Why did this mad scientist commit suicide by jumping off a building at the beginning of this bad movie? This is never explained. Why would some insane evil scientist like this have thousands of followers when they know that by trying to kill billions of people they would also probably have to die as well. Why is this pandemic disease only going to kill half of the world’s population? Will some kind of cure be introduced at some point to prevent everyone in the world from dying, because what is the point of trying to save the world from itself if at the end of this process everybody is dead anyway? This obvious and very important point is also never addressed in this film.

I am very surprised that Ron Howard, who is one of the best directors in the world, would decide to make this 3rd and hopefully very last film in this trilogy of books written by Dan Brown. I also hated the previous 2 movies in this series, “Angels and Demons” that came out in 2009 and “The Davinci Code”, that came out in 2006. Name recognition and the popularity of these books are the reasons why these movies were made, but these books clearly do not translate very well into good or even average movies. Every one of these films is mostly the same story. Solving mysteries, traveling around the world and people chasing people in different parts of the world while they try to solve these mysteries. There is nothing wrong with complex riddles that have to be solved within a story; but have these riddles make some sort of common sense and not be so completely off the wall. Make the connections between the complex dots of the plot make sense and have some kind of an understandable flow to them. Have conclusions drawn that make some sort of common sense that can be understood by the audience. Don’t leave the audience hanging and wondering about something before you jump to another scene that seems to have no connection to a previous scene or plot line. Even the big surprise twist at the end of this movie was also ridiculous and really made no sense given all that had happened previously.

I surprised myself at how much I disliked this very bad movie, which should be missed by everyone, especially fans of the 3 Dan Brown books. If you like the books, then stick with them, as they have to be better than all 3 of these very bad movies.