In a dead heat with Thin Red Line, still the best WWII film.

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2003)

I saw this on the very same day I saw Star Wars. Then a month later, I did it again, ABTF and SW on the same day. I've made it a point to watch ABTF every few years from then on, and wow, it's a damn fine flick, isn't it?
It was a series of firsts for me, I can't speak for anybody else:
For the first time, we don't get the soldier clutching a bloodless wound and dying a quick, tidy, glorified, recruitment office approved, old Hollywood death.
For the first time, we get insight into the interminable waiting by civilians like you and me, followed by a blinding ray of hope, followed by indescribable horrors.
For the first time, we get a sense of the hellish logistical maze that major military operations must work out, compromising itself and the lives of thousands of men, because of an appalling lack of vision by some petty official ("We'll land you 10 miles out of town, since we cannot afford to loose a single glider").
For the first time, we see how the little details can do the biggest operations in ("It seems, sir, that the radios have been supplied with the wrong crystals").
For the first time, we see the astounding stupidity of mankind (that's the race I belong to, I'm sometimes ashamed to say) taking the form of Volksgrenadier boy soldiers.
And the paratrooping sequence. The artillery shells coming closer and closer. The construction of the Bailey bridge.
Any weak elements of the film are overwhelmed by sequences such as these.
Furthermore, it is to Cornelius Ryan's gigantic credit that he shows, in both TLD and ABTF, german officials as genuinely human, as opposed to caricatures. Spielberg STILL succumbs to this childlish temptation.
Just a couple of thoughts:
1. Gen. Gavin (Ryan O'Neal) is not necessarily too young to be a General. During wartime, the size of an army balloons, red tape shrinks to a minimum, and gifted leaders can quickly achieve extremely high rank. Accordingly, once war operations come to an end and the size of an army deflates, to compensate, many high ranking officials are demoted back to their pre-war rank.
2. Somebody mentioned something about americans arriving at the end of WWI, therefore not having lived the full, debilitating horrors of trench warfare, as Montgomery did. Fiddlesticks. It was americans who invented trench warfare during the Civil War. If european generals had bothered to study the american military experience, WWI would have ended much sooner. What the american army did in 1917, when on the offensive for the first time, was attack in ZIG-ZAG with many flexible units, instead of full frontal assaults right at pillboxes with machine guns. Thus, american tactics quickly sent dumbfounded germans reeling into defeat.
Some films have to be three hours long, and this is one of them. Any way you look at it, ATF is a thrilling, horrifying, thought- provoking, all around excellent film. A grand slam.
Now where's the definitive Russian Front epic, the life and times of Andrei Zhukov, Grand Marshall of the Soviet Union? Now THERE'S an epic, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and Berlin, clocking in at just under four hours, whaddya say?