Best film of 1998

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 1999)

Saving Private Ryan is the best film of 1998. Why? It is the most accurate description that anyone living today will ever see of World War II combat. It is visceral, it is gut wrenching and it was real. What we are exposed to in Saving Private Ryan was a meat grinder, and that's what the soldiers on Omaha Beach faced that day. Spielberg throws us into the melee and we are there, we get to feel the dread as the boats come ashore. We hear the pounding bass of mortar rounds as they roar in from above, and we feel the fear that the soldiers feel. We don't know what's waiting for us on that beach, and when those doors open, we step into hell.
The camera work during this sequence is amazing. You are disoriented, and you don't know where the fire is coming from. You try to make it to cover as machine gun bullets tear into the beach and your fellow soldiers. Mortar rounds deafen you as they explode a few feet away, and you watch in a numb horror as you see friends vanish before your eyes. That's what war is, pure and simple. No time for thoughts on what the nature of God is or any of that metaphysical junk, you're just thinking am I going to live?
Saving Private Ryan lets us see what it was like to be a soldier in WWII. We get to know each of the soldiers under Tom Hanks' command. We feel the loss of their lives because Spielberg invests time with these men. We feel their anger and resentment toward Ryan. Why is he so special? Why does he get the ticket home and we get to stay here? The more time we spend with these men, the more we know them. When they finally find Ryan, our view of him changes. He's not just some punk that the top brass sent us out to find, he's a soldier. He's one of us, and we'll do everything in our power to get him out alive.
You want a meditation on the nature of war and man and what God is? Watch The Thin Red Line and have your butt numbed. You want an experience that will linger with you for days? Watch Saving Private Ryan, then ask your grandparents about WWII. See what they say.