15 Best Movie Deaths Of 2016
9. Hacksaw Ridge – Suicide By Seppuku
Most of the latter half of Mel Gibson’s wartime biopic Hacksaw Ridge is a series of drawn out battle scenes showing the horrific, gory realities of conflict. Set during World War II, the movie stars Andrew Garfield as real-life pacifist and combat medic Desmond Doss as he sent to off to serve in the bloody Battle of Okinawa in Japan.
True to his pacifist beliefs, Doss refused to kill or carry a weapon during his time in battle, but miraculously and heroically ended up saving the lives of 75 soldiers in one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War.
If you thought Saving Private Ryan’s famously brutal Omaha Beach battle scene was gory, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Hacksaw Ridge’s harrowing combat scenes feature disembowelments, dismemberments and soldiers on both sides getting blown to pieces in horrifically realistic detail, but one of its most unforgettable death scenes features a defeated Japanese commander committing seppuku – a ritual suicide involving self-disembowelment – before being beheaded by his underling.
Played for contrast between Doss’ self-sacrificing Christianity and the commander’s act of dying with honour, it’s one of the few scenes that humanises the Japanese enemy and is all the more memorable for it.