A masterpiece of fictional reality...

Rating: Null/10 (9 September 1998)

This movie has found a place in my all time top ten. I can't name the other nine right off of the top of my head but I have to say that this movie would be in it. There isn't a lot you can say to explain this movie because it's a huge, heaping dose of reality encased in three hours of film. The plot is simple, four brothers go off to war, three die, and the government wants to bring the sole surviving Ryan brother home. After a grueling and gruesome landing at Omaha Beach, the men who are sent after him search all over the war theater of Europe during WWII for the lone, living Ryan brother. Still, if they had tacked much more of a plot on to the movie with the time they used, it wouldn't have had the same impact. The movie would have to have been longer. I wouldn't have minded if it had been. The characters don't have a lot of time to be developed, due to the nature of war and the film, but the parts are all well delivered and acted, (I'm sure at least partially to the direction of Spielberg), but it is Tom Hanks that makes it all stick together. I read another review of this movie which said that Tom Hanks' performance was "a quiet miracle". This is the most accurate description of the part he plays that I have read to date. This movie illustrates the differences between modern/faces-never-seen warfare and warfare of a past era. You have to wonder after seeing this movie if violence wouldn't be so prevalent in our world if it war was now as it once was in the past. The first 45 minutes of this movie are so overwhelming I would be surprised if a person could bring themselves to speak after it. In fact, I've never been in a theater with such silence throughout an entire movie, (except for when I saw Highlander II, and that silence was more due to disappointment and disgust than any profound impact ). The whole sequence of events moves at such break-neck speed, with such reality, that you forget there is a camera filming it all. At times, it seems as if you're seeing it all through the eyes of someone on the field of battle. The climax of the film, in relation to the beginning of the film, has a slight plot twist, (that's how I perceived it), that makes the whole thing come together plot-wise, and it attempts to give a little tug at the heart strings- I didn't mind. I should say, as I finish this, that this isn't a movie for those with weak stomachs. The movie isn't filled with blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore. It is VERY realistic though, almost sickeningly so. Take all of the war movies ever made, strip away the bravado, the glory, the bravery, and the chest clutching sort of "tough guy" attitudes, throw in the violence and horrific injury that accompanies that kind of combat and you'll have the feeling of a good part of "Saving Private Ryan" - at least I think so. Basically, I wouldn't take the kids to it and I wouldn't go if the sight of blood makes you ill. Amazing, impacting, overwhelming, horrifying, and realistic are words I would use to describe this movie. Wow.