Under- or over-rated?

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2003)

Does anyone remember seeing Saving Private Ryan for the first time? When it opened in summer 1998? Before all those good reviews and history teachers guilted you into watching it? Before it lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love?
Most people, I think, don't. So much praise was heaped on this film on its initial release and so much outrage was expressed when it was passed over in favor of Shakespeare in Love, it's hard to enter this movie "clean" and with a fresh mind. It always surprises me when a fellow movie buff calls Ryan "overrated", and I can't help but think that they're judging this movie on its reputation rather than its quality.
Yet watch Saving Private Ryan without the critical baggage: this is truly a great film. The much-discussed, stunning opening- and it is stunning- is followed by a war narrative that's every bit as good as Schindler's List. Anyone with a soul should have a powerful response to this movie, and positive or negative, there is little denying it is a testament to the profundity of cinema.