Heroic, searing, brilliant, and poetic. The extraordinary film of my generation.

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 1999)

Film stilled my voice for hours. NATO is in Yugoslavia. We cannot forget the Vietnam War. And we may never know enough about W.W.II. Etched forever in my memory is the scene of James Francis Ryan's mother, her body folding downwards and collapsing on the porch, on her knees, as she faces the men who bring the words of her three sons' deaths. Never has grief, the enormity of this grief, been captured with so much power and been so evocative. There is the scene with the French child returning to her family who appear to be living "on a shelf," that is, what is left of the floor of their bombed-out building, and this precious little girl hitting at her father, after her father's attempts to give her to the soldiers to take to safety. This is a film to see over and over, and to never ever forget.