Awesome war-recreation, sentimental stereotype dialogue

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2002)

I'm in two minds about this one, folks...
The opening is magnificent, possibly the greatest achievement in US film history to this date. The reality of these sequences are breathtaking, and Spielberg (along with his cast and crew) should get enormous credit for it. As a whole, however, this one is a disappointment.
In spite of the marvellous work of recapturing the stress and anguish of the common soldier of a major modern military conflict, I would say that Spielberg and his script-writer spoils most of it by creating a line of clichés, both when it comes to the characters involved and the dialogue between them. In my opinion, there is no place in a feature like this one for the kind of conversations the characters get involved in. I'm thinking here mainly of the pathetic attempts to turn everyone of the main characters into noble heroes, and do it just in time before the great German assault. Which brings me to another point of complaint: the portrayal and behaviour of the German soldiers. They are (with a single exception) anonymous characters whos only role in this film is to get gunned down by the invincible (well, I'm overstating this in order to prove a point, but you'll (hopefully) get the idea) American troopers. I'm the first to admit that the combat scenes are formidably done, set with an accute sense of reality to them that's rare in WWII related films. Nevertheless, Spielberg falls into another pitfall by portraying his single German identifiable soldier as a traitor, both to his own countrymen and his American captors. This is all in the spirit of the classical dehumanisation of the Germans in Hollywood WWII-productions. They're usually in any feature just to be used as extras, mowed down in the pursuit of freedom. I feel that a greater depth is lost when these stereotypes are repoduced yet again in a feature that promised to be (and perhaps still is) a classic. In spite of these reservations, I would like to congratulate Mr. Spielberg and his cast and crew on a great achievement, only sligthly tarnished by the points I've mentioned above.