uplifting w/o that "us versus them" garbage

Rating: 9/10 (15 July 2004)

one thing that i really appreciated about saints and soldiers over other films of it's kind, like saving private ryan, was the humanity that was given to all sides, highlighted in deacon's relationship with his German friend, and in the growing religious and cultural tolerance between deacon and gould.
war films have a tendency to demonize the "other". there are obvious reason's for this. for one it's easy for an audience to hate the enemies of a movie's heroes. if a writer or director is not sensitive to this, the demonization can easily be compounded by unthoughtful film-making.
world war II is tricky as well. few greater villains than hiltler's nazi's have ever existed. an audience understands this. most of any world war II film's audience will place their personal beliefs in line with the allied forces rather than with hitler's nazi Germany.
saving private ryan touches on this issue when tom hanks character decides to let a couple of nazi soldiers go. his decision to let his enemies go, along with the personal backgrounds of the u.s. soldiers (and hanks character in particular), gives the audience a sense that all of these soldiers, nazi or allied, are real people. this fine point is destroyed later in the movie when ***saving private ryan spoiler*** the nazi troop that hanks lets go ends up being the one that kills him. this leaves the audience with one of two possible conclusions. either: war is hell and nobody really wins (the conclusion that the film's opening on the beach sets up, and the one that i'd hope people would take from a beautiful movie like saving private ryan) OR (the conclusion that races through most people's minds as hanks is shot to death) "he should have killed that guy when he had the chance." this ending, whether intentional or not, defeats the rest of the movie by making it not about humanity but about getting the bad guys.
while saints and soldiers is not completely free of that good against evil mentality (like i said earlier, few war films are), it does go further than any film in recent memory, and definitely further than any world war II film, to show us that these people, on both sides of the war, and of any religious or cultural background, are just that...people. in this genre that takes honesty, thoughtfulness, and subtlety by writers directors and actors. saints and soldiers delivers all of the above. for that i am thankful.