Powerful War Story.

Rating: 8/10 (18 September 2013)

Steven Spielberg once again won a best directing Academy Award for this powerful film(based on fact) that opens with the D-Day invasion on Normandy France, and the battle to secure the beaches as the first step toward liberating France. The battle itself is the most realistic portrayal of actual battle conditions ever put to film, so authentic is the chaos, violence, and impact bullets and explosions would really have on limbs and bodies(no sugar-coating or censoring here!) that it is both fascinating yet disturbing as well. Tom Hanks plays Capt. Miller, who is in charge of the platoon, and once the beaches are secured, he is ordered to locate and return home a Private Ryan(Matt Damon) because he has just lost three brothers in battle, and the Army doesn't want the bad publicity of a grieving mother mourning all four sons. Though he and his platoon are astonished by the order, they obey it, and the rest of the film is their journey to find Ryan, and still fight the war.
The first section of the film on the beaches is so powerful and realistic, that the search for Ryan almost feels anti-climatic, yet this film still works because of the realism and superb storytelling involved, though the prologue and epilogue lack the dramatic fireworks they were aiming for, they are still moving enough.