Lots to Love with Some Annoyances

Rating: 10/10 (17 August 2016)

Spoilers, Ho! The first scene in the Normandy cemetery of Saving Private Ryan is enough to put me on my knees and from there it gets even more emotional as we see the faces of the troops about to be the first to set foot on Omaha Beach which has since become a synonym of hellish warfare. It's hard for me to watch anything about vets of WWII without losing it. Just the damn trailer for Saving Private Ryan deserves an Academy Award. Brilliant.
The acting is great to not-so-great depending on the actors (and non-actors). I think you call it "screen presence" wherein you like seeing some people while others make you cringe. Great: Tom Sizemore, Tom Hanks, Ed Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovani Ribisi, Matt Damon, Adam Goldberg. I won't go into detail on those I didn't like but to contrast the cast of this movie just take a look at Band of Brothers. I loved every character in that series.
I just jotted down a few thoughts as I watched this classic for the umpteenth time:
The initial fight for the beach was about as intense as movies about war can be.
Although a visual masterpiece, the scene of the official car going to the home of the slain soldiers was a bit over-the-top as far as Americana. She should have been baking an apple pie. Any home in American, any crappy flat in New York would have served the same purpose without being quite as maudlin.
Vin Diesel couldn't get killed too soon for me. Had he met his maker during the opening credits would have been better but this was soon enough.
There is no freaking way they would have let that German soldier go. He would have picked up the first available weapon and continued fighting.
The pansy translator kid was terrible, both he and his role. I didn't like anything about him and the film would have been better without this character. There is a right and a wrong way to do smarmy.
Dying sucks, we get it already. I just thought they over-did this a bit. I realize this is a movie about one of the bloodiest wars ever but the long, drawn-out death scenes became corny and not dramatic.
There were a couple of great moments in the film. When Tom Hanks sort of splits through the tension verging on mutiny with the story of where he is from and what he did was the best of scene in the film. Matt Damon's dialogue about the last night with his brothers could have used a little work (the story about his brother trying to screw some ugly chick in the barn). It was a poor bit of writing.