Nostalgia for the 1970s.

Rating: Null/10 (5 March 2003)

Much has been made of how this extraordinary exercise in cinematic verisimilitude is a powerful anti-war statement, when in fact it is arguably no such thing. Indeed, there are many points in this film where one feels that it is less a 'powerful anti-war statement' and more a '1970s War Movie', The Dirty Dozen with highbrow pretensions.
This is a terrible shame of course as the film has many virtues; combat is depicted in a defining cinematic fashion, and generally presents war as existing in a moral void where, after all, the participants are attempting to slaughter each other. Good manners seem like something of an irrelevance when the bullets begin to fly.
Nonetheless, the film remains mired in the results its own incestuous matings with Clint Eastwood-Era cliche. Soldiers talk about their mothers in a church at night. Isolated and demoralised soldiers face down overwhelming odds. Soldiers improvise powerful weaponry from a everyday objects and some explosive. A charismatic, strong-but-silent soldier buys it in the last reel prompting many in the audience to pine "Oh... I liked him!"
And such obviousness is, frankly, the least of the film's worries. In a pivotal (if practically sepia-tinted) scene Captain Dale Dye adds another silver-haired martial patriarch to his already extensive Cv of such characters, and expresses the view that sending a squad of men after one paratrooper because of his mother is simple foolishness, on a purely mathematical level if nothing else. His CO offers a devastating counter-argument which is... nonsensical, frankly.
As the scene closes, the CO having read out a very admirable letter by Abraham Lincoln, he has not made the case for his proposed military venture. He hasn't made the case for anything, actually. In fact, if the letter has a message it is that young men die in war and tragically that's inevitable and the bereaved parents should be proud of their sacrifice. Even if one agrees with this sentiment it is still rather difficult to see how it supports the case for sending a squad to find Jimmy Ryan. Indeed, it would appear to run utterly counter to it! But presumably everybody - including the otherwise reliable Captain 'Calm Down Son' Dye - is too caught up in the moment to still be, you know, thinking or anything.
Worst of all, the characterisation of the squad themselves is largely cardboard-cut-out. A group of very able young actors are all saddled here with underdeveloped characters, all of whom appear to have been freshly unearthed from a metaphorical toybox where these lead soldiers have presumably been languishing since 1977. Only the ironically-named Sergeant Horvath truly impresses, and that is as much because of the way in which Tom Sizemore masterfully transforms cliche into archetype. It is surely plain to all that had this film involved any lengthy sequences in a French or Italian town, the good Sergeant would have shacked up with the madam of the local whorehouse in a matter of minutes.
This film is something of a Jekyll & Hyde then - quite honestly it's far too exciting to be genuinely anti-war, and perversely far too glib and simplistic on the subject of heroism and sacrifice to be an effective memorial to those who gave their lives. It's a shame that Spielberg did not choose to make a film that was in one camp or the other rather than straddling both in this way. As a technical achievement this film should not be missed, but it should not be mistaken for more than it is - a glorified 1970s war movie. Any who truly doubt this should reflect that the makers of this film saw no moral complications in adapting it into a succesful series of computer games, in which war is once again an exciting and heroic game.