Overwhelming but essential

Rating: 8/10 (19 March 1999)

It's pretty much all been said. I saw this movie in the largest theater in Dublin, and it was a full house (800). After the opening battle sequence there was a deathly hush unlike anything I have ever experienced before or since. It was obvious, that this was the closest anyone there had ever gotten to actual combat - that we had been transported back in time to a hell on earth and that nobody was ever going to be able to look at any war movies in the same light again. For this alone this film deserves its place in history.