Not worth watching.

Rating: 4/10 (27 February 1999)

This is a typical Spielberg movie. The basis is formed by a layer of american chauvinism, on which lies cheap, californian intellectualism, and the top is formed by multi-million dollars of special effects. The movie is pretentious and hollow, and commercial in the way that it pushes a couple of the buttons of turn-of-the-century american obsessions: family values, fear of the chaos of life and violence. It's quite understanding therefore that so many americans regard it as a good movie, as it strengthens emotions already there, instead of disrupting the mind, as any art should (in my opinion). As a war movie, it's mediocre. The agony of war is captured much better in films like Full Metal Jacket, Stalingrad and Das Boot. The sad thing is that it is the nationalism that is promoted in this movie (the whole movie is framed by a waving flag) that is so often the cause of wars.