The Best War Film Ever

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2005)

What Steven Spielberg has done with "Saving Private Ryan" is simultaneously craft an enormously successful depiction of World War II and a touching story that places a platoon of bewildered soldiers in a world of frantic pacing -- a startling world of gunfire and proceeding death. The constant movement of the shaky hand-held camera acts as a first person perspective -- we are not merely viewing the movie, but participating in it. This is perhaps as close as we will ever get to realizing the unadulterated fear those soldiers must have felt as they drew nearer to the beaches of France. It is one of the greatest war films ever put on celluloid, its scope arguably larger than any other in the genre, its conflict superb.