Saving Private Ryan (1999)

When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds.

A stalwart Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers have recently been killed in action. It's a public relations move for the Army, but it has historical precedent dating back to the Civil War. Some critics of the film have labeled the central characters stereotypes. If that is so, this movie gives stereotypes a good name: Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the hotheaded Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew, Vin Diesel as the oversize Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the soulful medic, and Jeremy Davies, who as a meek corporal gives the film its most memorable performance.

The movie is as heavy and realistic as Spielberg's Oscar-winning Schindler's List, but it's more kinetic. Spielberg and his ace technicians (the film won five Oscars: editing (Michael Kahn), cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), sound, sound effects, and directing) deliver battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut. The violence is extreme but never gratuitous. The final battle, a dizzying display of gusto, empathy, and chaos, leads to a profound repose. Saving Private Ryan touches us deeper than Schindler because it succinctly links the past with how we should feel today. It's the film Spielberg was destined to make. --Doug Thomas Amazon.com essential video

 Recommended Classic
The slow beginning may bore most people, other than that the story revolves around why a Military Organisation is never ever 100% efficient. Gore wasn't extreme, probably 2/5 for gory.
Not much extreme action, but when there's action they were great. 4/5
Story line is wonderful and believable. 5/5
Authenticity, 4/5 April 28, 2008

 The Greatest War Movie Ever Made...Period
As a result of the largely inane dialogue that arises out of pop culture's rabid desire to impute a sense of hierarchy to aesthetic works, there has been a stupid tendency to exalt works that convey the abstruse, the obscure, the macabre, the anti-climactic, the anti-cliche if you will. But those who say that Spielberg is overrated or lacks the cerebral auteurism of a Kubrick, the uncanny ability to manipulate suspense and fear such as Hitchcock, the lugubrious quiddities of a Kurosawa, or the romantic wit of Woody Allen, are absolutely stupid, to say the least. Spielberg is arguably the greatest director ever, and indisputably the most influential (one need not look further than the preponderance of escapist films made after the 70's). It is no mere hyperbole to say that Saving Private Ryan is the bar none the greatest war movie ever made, and probably ranks among the top 10 or 20 greatest films ever made.

The movie commences with a trip down memory lane, as we see an old man and his family clearly in distress. Intuitively we must assume the man seeks isolation--affirmed by his retrospection after he sees the grave of a soldier; the connection is not yet drawn though between this old man the grave at his feet. From the opening scene, wherein the audience bares witness to the pure and undistilled brutality of military carnage, Spielberg's technical virtuosity--unmatched in the history of film making--is no more apparent than when he uses the hand-held oscillations of the camera to convey a sense of presence to the scene. That is to say, the audience feels as if it is indeed part of the calamity it is privy to. The jarring immediacy of death--a motif revisited throughout the movie--appears at the blink of an eye as soldiers drop dead without even leaving their boats, and even more glaringly as we see soldiers drown, caught in the straps of their uniform and gear. Spielberg, chided as a sentimentalist, an unfair claim espoused by many who frankly don't know what the hell their talking about (such absolute labels are silly), conjures a sense of realism one doesn't see even in Full Metal Jacket (another great war movie, that pales in comparison to this). When bullets kill a soldier asking for advice in front of Tom Hanks, his death is not dramatized but a reminder that stagnancy in war is fatal. As for my last observation of the first scene--the piez de resistance--Spielberg curiously mutes all sound in the middle of the scene and the audience is temporarily transformed into first person viewer; cringing as men grab their intestines to keep them from falling out, recoiling as blood leaks from every orifice as soldiers run by, stunned when Spielberg, in a brief fusion of comedy and tragedy that Aristotle would be proud of, shows us a soldier with one arm turning in circles looking for his other arm. This, among many technical manipulations, represents a reprisal of conscience because in that brief 1st-person transference we are reminded of the omniscience of death and men, who must kill or be killed, die or effect death, lose pieces of their souls in war in a way that can only be shown in silence.

This movie is not for the light-hearted, but violence, as many of the more acute reviewers have stated, is not gratuitous. Yes some of his movies are flawed, or are simply bad, and yes at times he values style over substance, some of which even lack the former, and yes he has made tons of money; but above all Spielberg is a genius and this movie should be added to the cannon of unequivocally great movies made in World & American cinema. I leave with a simple message: the greatness of a movie, a director, or indeed any art, lies in its ability to change a person--to laugh, to cry, to fear is not enough. If one leaves a movie with an altered perception of things, perhaps a heightened understanding, then that work of art is indeed great. April 9, 2008

 Fabulous, shocking movie
This is an amazing movie. And the first seen of the Storming of Normandy was uterly shocking. Definitely a movie to own. April 8, 2008

 Saving Private Ryan
I was very disappointed in this movie, overall. It contained parts that were very graphic, but other than that it really wasn't very good. After the shore invasion, the story really took a turn, and not for the better. I found the whole story boring. April 6, 2008

 The Greatest War Movie Ever...
This movie is what changed my life and also what open my eyes in having knowledge of WWII, it also got me playing PC games like Medal of honor and Combat Flight Simulator and IL2 flight sims and Battlefield:1942 games. I live in south Georgia, so were surrounded by alot of wooded areas and when I go out side when the sun is setting I hear the birds chirp and in some cases in the movie there are simular scenes. Over all great movie, all the actors are some of my favorite actors of all time. This movie is a must have. I don't have this special edition yet, but I do have the widescreen dts/Dolbysurround sound edition. March 26, 2008

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