Cinematography the only redeeming thing

Rating: 4/10 (19 February 2002)

I heard so many great things about 'Saving Private Ryan' that my curiosity for this movie turned to pure shock as I watched it. I have to say that I really do not like war movies, so thats an obvious bias against this movie, but there were sooooooooooo many things about this movie that just made it a laughing stock of me and my friends. The cinematography in this film is simply amazing, in fact i'd say some of the best cinematography i've ever seen, but despite it's technical excellence, SPR is a pathetic, manipulative attempt by Speilberg to make him feel better about himself. The only character development in the movie takes place in the scenes before that particular character's death, it's happens in EVERY case; it's like clockwork. The ending is absolutely horrendously manipulative, and in fact the whole story doesn't really make sense as a result of it. SPOILER ALERT - don't read any farther if ya don't want to ruin the flick for yourself. At the beginning we have the shot of that old man at the grave, then it closes in on him and his memory begins of what happened... the only thing is that we find out the old man is really Ryan, not Tom Hank's Character, so i'm wondering how Ryan has all these memories of the beaches and the rest of the movie. Theoretically shouldn't the 'memories' start when Ryan enters the movie? Oh well, I can see arguments against my point, but the use of some certain camera angles REALLY makes the point of saying that the old man is Tom Hanks. I found this movie, above all things (even manipulative) to be extremely boring. Here's another case of a movie that had a about a 12 minute story stretched out to infinity. There are hundreds of little things that made me laugh about this movie in the wrong way, and obviously I won't go into all of them but I do feel this movie makes the German Armies look rediculous, specifically in the tank scene. There is many shots of the American soldiers running across open areas with dozens of germans shooting at them but they hardly ever get shot, while the Americans seem to hit somebody with every single bullet, and three people with every explosive. Other humorous moments include Tom Hanks diffusing a potentially hostile situation by telling everybody that hes a school teacher and the weak,poetry loving-'i've never shot anybody'- soldier killing a guy for no real reason in the situation. The performances were pretty good, I guess, but the script was so laughable that most of the things the guys say make you crack up no matter how well they say them. If you wanna see a good war movie, see Platoon, or if you hate war movies like I do, and you feel like watching a war satire, check out Starship Troopers.