Runs out of guts after the first 20 minutes (pun intended)

Rating: 4/10 (3 December 1998)

Aside from an utterly brilliant opening sequence (the landing on Omaha beach), this movie is basically old wine in a new bottle.
Spielberg flirts with the idea of realism (yes, kiddies, war isn't fun after all) and the pointlessness of war, but at the end, we've got the same old "small number of outgunned Americans save the day with ridiculously obvious tactics" theme. Haven't these Germans heard of scouts?
Also irritating is the fact that Spielberg sets us up for the mission to "Save Private Ryan" to be a ambiguous, even pointless affair, risking the lives of several men to save one, then suddenly loses the courage of his convictions: all of a sudden, we're fighting Germans in a strategically important battle. How convenient. "Just a dash of Catch-22, if you please..."
Speaking as an Australian, I suspect that this film might come as more of a revelation to me if I too had been raised to think of war in terms of John Wayne and Rambo and the rest. Newsflash for the clueless: War wasn't fun even before Vietnam...