B-movie about D-day.

Rating: 1/10 (29 November 1999)

The more I think about this film and read differing reviews about it the more I feel it wasn't meant for me. I'm a Finn, not American. I don't know if Spielberg meant this film as a last hoorah for the G.I.:s, but to me that is what he made. All right the film does have something to tell for everyone: in the insane theatre of war one should try to do the right thing, have courage to do it, that your actions have consequences, war as a whole creates nothing but bad feelings and probably something else too but nothing that has not been told earlier.
And I suppose that isn't so bad, I mean there have certainly been worse films. But what does bother me is that Spielberg set out to do a film about what war is really like and to me, he failed. Yes I have seen the opening scene and to me it was more about exploitation and action film then about anything else and not even very memorable action. Even if one would skip all the omissions and strange things about the film (in the landing scene no naval artillery support, no air force support and the illogical German tactics in the final battlescenes) to me the main plot is a strange curiosity that only serves to illustrate that the average soldier wasn't that interesting or important. Apparently with some links to reality the main plot remains distant and odd to me.
With Oscar, block-buster, critically acclaimed material as ww2 with all the gore how could Spielberg go wrong? First of all the acting. Well I could not stop wishing there would have been some lesser known actors used, maybe even amateurs. A lot has been made out of the cinematography and yes, it is good. Although to me it is not so effective when there is apparently too much money to make a film and then the camera work tries to make it look more realistic. As ww2 films go this film is a far cry from "Come and See". Yes I do admit that flag waving is a common problem among ww2 movies, I just wished that Spielberg could have avoided it.