A great action movie, but certainly not much of a drama.

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 1999)

The sad thing about this movie is the way the story takes a backseat to the gratuitous and often unrealistic level of violence. Previously to seeing this I had heard a LOT about how overblown the violence was. I've read several letters in the newspaper from actual WWII veterans who said the movie was unrealistic; and one of my co-workers (who just happened to be a First Lieutenant in Vietnam) also said that the violence was "overkill". Watching this movie, I really got the impression that Spielberg was just using the story of Private Ryan as an excuse to make an extremely bloody war movie that every one would go see because they had heard that it was more gory than "Braveheart". You'd really think that no one died in 1944 Europe unless they were exploded or had their guts blown out, or were decapitated, or disemboweled or something. When Tom Hanks pulls his radio guy over and his face was gone, I was like "Oh please, give me a break!". This was much more of an action movie than a war drama. I thought that "The Thin Red Line" was a much more thoughtful and dramatic movie that didn't rely on such copious amounts of violence. It was a far better picture. As was "Full Metal Jacket", and "The Deer Hunter", and "Platoon", and Apocalypse Now" etc., etc.