Disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (7 February 1999)

A poor movie. Spielberg has a limited emotional compass and boxed himself into an impossible corner with the opening carnage. After that, he needed to make a serious movie, of the calibre of All Quiet on the Western Front, or La Grande Illusion, to avoid bathos. As it is, the film meanders hopelessly, unable to decide whether to take itself seriously. It's a shame, since Hanks can act better than here directed, and Spielberg showed in Schindler's List that he can handle a serious theme, with telling economy. For me the truly bathetic scene was when the band of motley misfits decides to do a John Wayne and kill as many Germans as possible. This erodes the impact of the opening scene.