What a terrible beginning and end!

Rating: 6/10 (5 October 1999)

What a great movie, but what a horrible, horrible manipulative beginning and end flashforwards sequence. It was bad enough in Schindler's List, but at least there you had real people in the flashes. Here it's just old actors. Putrid. Bad! My wife was incoherently angry at the dishonesty of the first flashforward. Couldn't he do any better than this rehash technique? Doesn't he trust us to understand the (painfully obvious) point that the ending makes? Cut off those hack-worthy five minutes and you have one of the greatest war movies ever made, but with them on there, you have an insulting "6."