Numb and angry

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 1998)

I have to say that the criticisms I have read concerning this movie just don't ring true, but some of the praise seems equally wrong.
The movie seemingly uses a 'retrospective' method of framing the main action... which turns out to be not quite what it seems (to say more would give too much away). Some have called this cheesy, but I doubt that anyone would be saying that if 'Titanic' hadn't beaten SPR to it. It's effective, and sets you up for a plot twist at the end (If you still don't get it, that's too bad). The characters are fleshed out stereotypes because they are *representative* characters, and in a plot that's largely a cog in the whole symbolism of the thing. The battle of Omaha beach is not relevant for the plot, but this is a movie which steps outside its plot. It's a morality tale, not about soldiers, but about the modern world where some people are safe because others have died (horribly) bringing that about. This is what the seemingly confusing flashback is about, this is what the battle scenes are about and the whole point of the screenplay seems to be to get us to ask ourselves the question that the old man asks at the end of the movie. It's a shame that nit-picking amateur film critics fail to see the big picture.
As for the whole goriness thing... that's the way it is. Gory. You are supposed to be horrified, not entertained (someone described the landing sequence as 'exciting'. I don't know what's more frightening, the sequence or that response). And finally we have a film that pulls no punches and has so much moral ambiguity that we can identify with the characters, loathe them, and find no fault in them all at the same time. I would say 'brilliant', except that it's a function of the sheer horrific nature of the circumstances they find themselves in and not something you feel like applauding.
All in all, this is a movie that should, at the very least, change the way that the viewer thinks about action movies. Spielberg has done here for the War and Action genres what Eastwood did to the Western with 'Unforgiven': that is to say, completely debunked all the old Hollywood mythos and glorification. With all the tricks in the book Spielberg and co have created a nightmare image all from the perspective of its victims. I've never seen anything like it. Spielberg's battlefield is like the industrial revolution gone horribly wrong: a huge machine of percussive clashes, explosions and fire spitting out buzzing fragments of metal tearing chunks out of masonry, landscape and people. Hell in a can. Anyone who doesn't walk out of this movie in a state of numb denial muttering "never again" is already lost.
See it.