Very well done movie of conventional style

Rating: Null/10 (28 November 2001)

This movie is naturally often compared to The Longest Day. Both have enormous casts of stars involved in a number of subplots telling the story of a major campaign in W.W.II and both are taken from Cornelius Ryan wonderfully detailed books.
However, unlike The Longest Day, this movie is of a flawed military campaign and was made after Vietnam by a dovish older director (Richard Attenborough) with a fine but conventional style. The contrast with the graphic violence of other movies at the time and since (from Mean Streets to The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now to Do the Right Thing, Goodfellas to Saving Private Ryan) makes the movie's style (and its determined use of many huge stars) appear old-fashioned. Yet you sense that the tone of Saving Private Ryan is what the director wanted - he doesn't quite get it because there are too many stories. (Had he shown only the Anthony Hopkins group at Arnheim, he may have achieved more of the effect he wanted). Thus, the movie falls a bit between two stools. It uneasily has both a derring-do musical score and a darkness about the carnage one sees in "Enemies at the Gates". The movie has both the sort of humor always shown in war movies before the 1970s (the roles of Elliott Gould and to some extent James Caan come to mind) and a compassion for the wounded one would see in very anti-war movies such as Platoon.
Overall, I quite liked the movie- the story itself is far more interesting than most movies, and the acting is quite good. The many star parts are both enjoyable and distracting.
I'd definitely recommend it - just know that its style isn't as harrowing in the way of movies such as The Deer Hunter, Platoon or Saving Private Ryan, nor is its content the kind of flag-waver such as movies like Rambo or made before Vietnam. It's a very enjoyable mix.