Don't believe the hype

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 1998)

First, this is a good movie. I gave it an eight out of ten. But to all of you who have called it the greatest war-movie ever; you haven't seen enough movies. It may be the best American war-movie, but it isn't nearly as good as for example "Stalingrad", or "Das Boot". It starts out very good, the famous first twenty minutes are really very good. But then it deteriorates steadily. Especially, it is very one-sided. Some people say it's an anti-war movie, I can't agree with that. This movie shows only the allied soldiers as human, and the Germans as faceless monsters. The real horror of war is that there are ordinary scared young men on both sides. This dimension is lost completely in this movie.