The finest war film ever made

Rating: 10/10 (9 April 2006)

During the opening sequence when I saw the man's face and I was preparing myself for a long flashback, a growing sense of dread overcame me. Yet still I was not prepared for the horror that I was exposed to for the next 2 1/2 hours. Horror is the only way to describe this film. I wasn't simply watching the film. I was absorbed into it. Steven Spielberg is arguably the most famous film director out there, and for good reason too. He can make a film like no one else. Everything here works so well, the acting, the action sequences, the atmosphere and emotion. It's all here, and highly energized. This, along with Schindler's List, one of the greatest films in cinematic history. is Spielberg's masterpiece. One of the main reasons this film works is his cinematographer Janusz Kiminski. The grit of the camera sets up the atmosphere perfectly, and the lighting is superb because even when it's a sunny day, it's still covered in darkness. People have criticized this film for having a bad storyline. That's not true, not at all. While the storyline is simple and nothing new, it's because that's what it would have been like in real life. Life is not a intricately woven storyline like say The Silence of the Lambs, and the people with this film know that. The key to making this film work is making it real. And that it does.