Style over substance

Rating: 7/10 (6 February 1999)

Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan can perhaps be viewed as the aesthetic masterpiece that all of his previous endeavors in film has been working toward. Private Ryan, from a purely cinematographic point of view, is an absolute masterpiece, an exploration of the uses of cinematography in a studio film must be applauded for doing so. However, the script leaves something to be desired. The characters are cardboard cutouts (you know a character is when you can describe him in a few words) and the fact that the theme is practically drilled into our skulls by the book-ending modern day sequences should be insulting to the intelligence of every audience member watching. Spielberg deserves applause for his technique in Saving Private Ryan, but how it got filmed in the first place on the basis of its script is beyond me.