The rocky road of Mel Gibson's Hollywood career looks set to get a little smoother after the rapturous response to his latest directorial outing Hacksaw Ridge at the Venice Film Festival.
The film received a ten minute standing ovation after its world premiere and will go on to a global release in November.
It's been a decade since Apocalypto, the last time the Oscar-winning filmmaker stepped behind the camera, and it took the story of war hero Desmond Doss to do it.
"It's a phenomenal story. He's a very rare individual, the first conscientious objector to receive the highest honour for courage in the Second World War," says Gibson.
Hacksaw Ridge has Oscar written all over it - if Hollywood lets Gibson's foot back in the door.
His very public battle with the bottle culminated in the now infamous anti-Semitic rant at a Jewish police officer and abusive phone messages to his ex Oksana Grigorieva. The resulting Hollywood death knell was deafening.
Over his long career as a filmmaker, Gibson has embodied and directed many a memorable cinematic hero; so has his notion of what a hero is changed over the years?
"I don't think it ever changes - what makes someone heroic? Sometimes being that guy that is someone who singularly stands by his convictions, and who suffers for it."
Before Hacksaw Ridge hits the big screen, Gibson can be found on-screen, in the lead role of John Link in Blood Father.
Here we find him washed up in a trailer park he shares with his demons and bad memories. He's an ex-con, an ex-alcoholic, and a pretty average father. When redemption comes knocking at his door, he opens it.
"I just kinda liked him. I liked the gruffness of it. Where he'd gotten to, he'd been chewed up and spat out by life - he had a bunch of regrets, and he just gets another shot at stuff, another chance to make it up to those people he's let down," says Gibson.
"I think everyone is messed up like that, to a degree. I think if you do it in a truthful way, and people see themselves in that, they can relate to that. I don't know, you see you own struggles get echoed in someone else's flawed character. We're all flawed."
Blood Father is playing in New Zealand cinemas now, Hacksaw Ridge lands November 3.
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