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Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Easily the best film ever
Review: I was surprised when I read reviews from viewers that Saving Private Ryan was not a good film. It practically drove me crazy reading their awful reviews of how violent, gory, and just overall plain bad the film was. Hello?! It's a World War II movie. In fact, showing the violence and the gore made this movie a whole lot better. It showed what the war was really like, and we could experience it in our own living rooms without being in any danger. But the fact that thousands among thousands of soldiers died during this war, and the was they filmed it, made it seem much more of a mature film than when they cut out what really happened.

You could see the fear in the soldiers' eyes as the slowly moved up the beach, trying to dodge the "walls of steel" brought on by the German soldiers. The first scene, full of blood and gore, was hard to watch, but knowing that somebody even attempted to show us this was actually very nice. And who better to do it than Spielberg, eh?!

The second thing that I noticed was that people have called this "another action movie" without even seeing it! For one, this isn't even classified as an action film. It's a drama. An action movie is all shooting and blood, without a firm plot and something to actually fight for. Saving Private Ryan had many sad scenes, and the fact that their mission was to bring home, I mean, save Private Ryan, hence the title, was something nice to see. For the first time in a while, I saw a movie where somebody actually risked their lives for somebody else. Trying to get him home to his mother so she wouldn't lose all four of her sons in war was a great plot, and it made me wish that they would succeed.

Saving Private Ryan is a great film, worthy of the highest praise from all of us. And the fact that it won best picture and best director, Spielberg, has to tell you something.

Good work again, Mr. Spielberg. You have yet to let me down considerably. I can't wait for AI........

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Authentic war epic
Review: "Saving Private Ryan" contains possibly the most authentic-looking war scenes in the history of film. The camera evokes a grainy, staccato, newsreel-type effect. This is not a sanitised, big extravaganza made to thrill and entertain, like conventional war flicks, but a film with the power to attack in the gut... Spielberg demonstrates that he has left his "childlike" phase behind him: the phase in which he made films such as "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "E.T." and "Jurassic Park" -- all which were excellent, but not of the maturity of "Schindler's Liste" and "Saving Private Ryan". This is a must-see film, the best war movie, perhaps, since "Apocalypse Now"...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply the best
Review: The best and most realistic war movie ever made.Period.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Better World War II Movies
Review: Steven Spielburg set a new standard for war movies with "Saving Private," and this feature is in the "Top Ten" with little doubt.

The story follows a Ranger team on a rescue mission to save Private Ryan after the Army learns that Private Ryan is the sole survivor of a family's four sons.

Tom Hanks is CPT Miller, commander of the team assigned to retrieve Ryan who is located somewhere in Normandy with the 101st Airborne Division that parachuted inland of the main D-Day invasion force. Hanks turns in another solid acting performance, supported equally as well by Tom Sizemore as the team's senior sergeant. Edward Burns is a wisecracking and temperamental machine-gunner, and Barry Pepper is another standout as the team's sniper who recites prayers while carrying out his deadly work.

The opening scenes of the D-Day landings with the 2d Ranger Battalion and the 29th Infantry Division on Omaha Beach are horrific. The battles are vividly portrayed in gruesome detail as Rangers and Infantry are cut down by German machine-gunners and artillery while assaulting their objectives. This sequence alone is the movie's trademark and sets a new benchmark for realism.

There's little to fault in this movie, with exception that the D-Day beach introduction steals a lot of the film's thunder, leaving some viewers impatient and waiting for the climatic sequence to occur. There is a hard-fought battle at the end of the movie, but it doesn't quite measure up to the D-Day sequence.

Overall an excellent movie and the DVD is high quality. However, the TV screen does not recreate the theater-experience that was the best way to see this film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Film Making at it's best
Review: Saving Private Ryan is a masterpiece of film making and is the definitive film ever made on World War II. Tom Hanks leads a platoon of soldiers, searching for a missing private (Matt Damon) whose brothers have died recently in combat. The fictional story is masterfully blended with the D-Day invasion to give us a movie that is both good history and also good film making.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Saving Private Ryan
Review: This was the best moive I have seen in my life. No matter what that edjones621 says about this moive it is and allways will be the best. The D-Day scene was by far the best ever. When Wade died my heart broke. From the begining to the end I was at the edge of my seat. At the last scene I almost cryed. I will always charish this moive!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Spielberg's Patriotic Propoganda
Review: Saving Private Ryan is a movie that we have all seen too many times. It is a war movie with a lot of action and a lot of patriotic babble. Tom Hanks plays the humble man who is a teacher turned soldier and who apparently believes it is honorable to fight and kill in a war for the sole purpose of going back home again. The enemy are portrayed as heartless and evil, with one german prisoner behaving like a circus freak. The Americans are stereotypes: tough guy, bookworm coward, humble leader, religious guy, city guy, etc.

Although the opening scene is brilliantly filmed by Spielberg, 15 minutes does not make a great movie. And as for its supposedly realistic portrayal of violence? Obviously the violence is meant to appeal to action/horror movie fans. I know college age guys who watch the movie just to see the blood and gore. So when you come right down to it, all this movie has going for it is depiction of death in war. Each soldier's death is meant to be even "cooler" than the last one. This is a brilliantly filmed melodrama that has a pitifully weak story and a muddled message. The most offensive thing, I believe, was ending the movie with an American flag waving proudly, as if to suggest that the death of millions of innocent young men can be justified by a symbol. If Americans want to continue to think of war as honorable, then maybe we should start another Civil War...it would surely inspire countless films and endless entertainment for fans of graphic violence.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Saving Private Ryan - DTS DVD
Review: Saving Private Ryan - DTS DVD is good

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Nothing less than a real masterpiece, a monumental film of the same category as Ben Hur or Citizen Kane - a modern day classic! A warning though : if you have a weak stomach, don't dare to watch even a second of it - the blood and guts splatter all over the place from the very first scene on to the grand finale and there are only very few moments of relief in between.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: One of the most realistic WWII movies ever made
Review: This film has been mentioned as the greatest WWII film of all time. It was very good, but nowhere near that good. It probably qualifies as the one of best WWII films made after 1970. There were dozens of great films with better stories made in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's when the war was still fresh in everyone's minds.

The story was about a rescue mission to find a paratrooper behind enemy lines and bring him back alive, because all his brothers had been killed in the war. The platoon was commanded by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) who had to take his men through enemy controlled territory to rescue Private Ryan (Matt Damon). It is a combination character study and action film, more about the platoon than about Private Ryan himself. Other than Captain Miller, there wasn't very much character development, but there was a good deal of time devoted to the human dynamics within the platoon, which was excellent.

What really stands out about this film is the direction. Steven Spielberg has created probably the most gut wrenchingly realistic war movie ever made. The scenes on the beach at Normandy were terrifying. This should be required viewing for all politicians and generals before we commit men to battle. Spielberg's attention to detail and willingness to show the grisly and horrifying results of men being thrown into a fusillade of projectiles is unparalleled.

The entire ensemble cast did a terrific job. Tom Hanks, as always, was masterful as Captain Miller. He struck just the right balance between the sympathetic commander who understood what his men were going through, and the hard-nosed military man who had to force them to do a job they didn't want to do.

I rated this film an 8/10. It wasn't the greatest WWII story ever told, but it may have been the greatest telling of such a story. This film shows explicit battle scenes that are brutally gory. It is definitely not for the squeamish.


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