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Summary: Greatest war movie ever?
Review: Well, maybe, maybe not...I'm certainly not a war movie officionado, but SPR was excellent. If you haven't seen it, you've certainly at least heard about the opening half hour. While it is great (especially on DVD with surround), the movie as a whole was fantastic with some good insight into each of the characters. Tom Hanks was, as usual, believable and inspiring in his role. This movie, while full of generous doses of action, really shows the horrors of war. I'm not ashamed to admit I cried at the end.PS - make sure you pay attention to "the letter."
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Summary: Another Masterpiece from the Spielberg Factory
Review: There have been quite a few complaints about this film, and I find all of these comments to be quite petty and not without proper understanding before typing. This film is a magnificent testement to the sacrifices all our figthing men in WWII made in order to ensure the freedom we have taken for granted today. Is the film sentimental? Sure, patriotism can be quite sentimental at times, but in the case of this film it only adds to the emotion of this piece. Is the film excessive? No, not by all the reviews and comments made by historians and real-life WWII soldiers saying to the contrary. In fact, Spielberg has created one of the very few war pictures that does not glorify the violence. The unflinching matter-of-factness of Saving Private Ryan is a very drastic contrast from say Sands of Iwo Jima or the Green Berets. Instead it reveals war's dirtier subtlities. Underneath all those shrapnel explosions, Spielberg and Hanks compose real human beings under extroadinary challenges. The film's been criticized for being boring within the first and last half-hours. This interlude people we call storytelling and plot-building. The tension stays reliably intense as our small group of troubled soldiers embark hesitantly towards their possible destinies. Sure, Matt Damon's behavior later in the film may be predictable. Yet, human behavior is in itself predictable. The notorious german character with no helmet has been described as mistake; many detractors feel letting this character be individual and easily recognized to be too convenient. The german soldier just like Orson Welles's Rosebud or John Ford's Monument Valley are archetpal symbols of the directors visions. They are symbolic of the film's purpose, and are not meant to be artistic re-treat. Each character within the film has his or her own symbolic meaning. In Saving Private Ryan we see plenty fanatastic characterizations from every in ths cast. The film like many other Spielberg movies captures many aspects of old films in the same genre. Despite the lack of violence romanticism, Spielberg has fairly familar emsamble journey story with lots of fairly obvious personal growth relevations sprinkled throughout. Unlike most flmmakers, it is the ciematic storytelling of Spielberg that makes all the differece. In his best material, he always brings startling and suprising elequence to the most typical seeming story. One look at the unbelievable dramaitic impact of the film's opening Omaha Beach sequence just goes to show that when it comes to WWII material movies Spielberg still has it.
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Summary: Saving Private Ryan
Review: This was a great movie and a great story - in fact - for Don Jourdan and Brett Champion - it is based on a very TRUE story. Ryan did not leave his band of brothers - if you had bothered to actually watch you would see that the balance of his platoon was apparently all killed during the final battle scene. Above all, this movie should send to each and every one the unimagineable (to almost everyone)horror and violence many of our veterans have gone through, and that we should always be greatful for the sacrifices.
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Summary: The pain of war on film
Review: This film Does have a "bad reason for it's existance - four brothers, three killed, mission: to find the fourth.. bla bla...... an old man crying on an unknown grave and a corny ending. How ever, Speilberg, A visuall Genouse, has all the talent and love of film to make every thing els work. A 23 minut sequence opens the film (after the grave yard) with the most violant, horrifing and realistic battle sequence I have ever seen on film. Not much inteligante diologue in the film, just war, and alot of it. No mercy in visuals, and alot of pain in between. Tom Hanks giving great peformance of an officer who is human as any of us, trying to find a way home through the true horros of war. It's one of those films that you don't realize that there was a director and actors making this movie. You just sit in the theatre and experience some thing that is horror in the deepest meening of the word.
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Summary: The Best war film ever
Review: Saving Private Ryan, with its realism, is the greatest war film ever made. The audio and visual sound effects of both battle scenes make you feel as if you are right beside Cpt. Miller (Tom Hanks). For a person who loves studying World War II, but was not alive during that time of madness, this movie gives me more respect for WWII veterans because it gave me a greater sense of exactly what they went through.
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Summary: An Amazing Film To Educated Todays Teens
Review: I for one, being a teenager, knew basically how World War 2began and what it's outcome was, yet I did not have this realisticperspective of WW2. Honestly, I had respect for the soldiers who fought and died for our country, yet I lacked this true feeling of compassion for the soldiers. I basically thought the whole war was idiotic, and the soldiers were just millions of men not knowing what they were truely doing. Yet after watching this film, after my parents strong advised I should, I felt as though I had expierenced WW2 with my very own eyes. I was shaken and left with many emotions afterwards. Speilberg is a great director, and knows how to educated others soo well with the magics of film. I now feel that ww2 was just not any war, and their soldiers where just not any men, they were heros.
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Summary: Why Were All Four Brothers Drafted Anyway?
Review: Saving Private Ryan is a movie that starts with extreme promise, the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The storming of the beach is the most realistic scene ever shown in a war movie. I'm sure that it made several people very uncomfortable to find out that even the great WWII was an extremely brutal affair for American GIs. Many people have probably only associated this with Vietnam or Korea. After that though it tapers off into the what the title says the movie is about, saving Private Ryan. Ryan has had three brothers killed in the war and the army has decided that he should be brought home so that his family will still have one son alive at the end of the war. My first question after finding this out was: wasn't the army smart enough in the first place to realize that yes all four of these boys could have been killed in this war if they were all sent off to battle? Didn't they even consider the possibility that by placing them all in harm's way that none of them would survive? After watching the unit that was selected to retrieve Ryan slosh through miles of terrain to find and bring him back, I knew as soon as they found him that he wouldn't want to leave. He was going to make some speech about how the guys in his unit were now his brothers and that he couldn't leave them, which is what he did. The final 30 minutes of the movie resumed the action that left off at the beginning. So it did end up strong. The really interesting story line was the incidents involving the captured German soldier. Those scenes really showed you more than you need to know about the realities of war. Saving Private Ryan is not the best war movie that has ever been done (see Midway); but, it certainly is not the worst (see any movie involving a Vietnam vet that goes back to Vietnam to retrieve POWs). It is at least an enlightening movie even though it is not a completely entertaining one.
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Summary: The BEST film of 1998- A must have for everyone
Review: This is, by far, the best film I have ever seen. Everything, from the actin to the score to the direction to the cinematography to the speical evvects to the character development to the script ect. far surpass anything else produced in 1998. Spielberg uses such realism that we acutally forget that we are watching Tom Hanks, one of the most recognizeable faces in the world today. Hanks too deserves credit for fitting his persona so well. He is less the "Gung Ho!" John Wayne and more the nervous Lew Ayres from "All Quiet on the Western Front." However, Jermey Davies successfully steals the show from Hanks and other great preformances by Ed Burns, Tom Siezmore and Giovani Ribisi (Medic Wade). Davies shows us a sort of everyman quality; a vision of what all of us would do had we been put under those circumstances. This film has such a realism (despite one "Hollywood" plot twist) that almost makes us tink everything is real. Upon reminising about the film, I can't help but ask myself "was that really a movie?" There is almos a documentary flavor to this film. The jargon the men use, the way scenes are shot (many with hand held cameras)and the washed out color all add to the documentary look. Speilberg's dirrection leaves the film looking, sounding, and feelig complete. With this film, his career will be colmplete, it will be tough for anyone (even Speilberg) to top it. If you don't have Saving Private Ryan, buy it; you will be pleased with what you get.
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Summary: We all know the movie is excellent
Review: For all of you stereo freeks like myself who have decided to pay for the extra surround goodies with DTS. Trust me, if you are contemplating the money difference between the DD and DTS versions, the extra bucks are worth it. I own both and in direct comparison, I will choose the DTS version 9 days a week. Trust me.
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Summary: To a couple of earlier reviewers:
Review: To the lady from Chicago who complained about the lack of African American faces in the movie: In 1944 the armed forces were still segregated and I don't recall any black units being part of the first wave. To the gentleman from England: This movie was about Ohama beach, which was attached exclusively by American forces. There were no British, Canadian or Free French at that beach, so this has nothing to do with "American winning the war alone." Is historical accuracy now going to be a victim of blinkered political correctness?
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