I'll Never Be the Same

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 1999)

Anyone who comments on this movie as being "too graphic", "lacking in character development", or as having "scenes that could be cut" is missing the entire point of the movie. While we sit here in the 1990s, in a comfy movie theater watching a fictionalized version of the horrors of the taking of Omaha Beach, there were hundreds of young men barely past high school age who had to LIVE IT.
To say that a scene was too graphic is to belittle the men who had to witness it first hand and did not have the option of turning off the VCR or leaving the theater.
Sometimes, a movie is supposed to make us think. Sometimes things are not always laid out for us--we have to pick them up ourselves. And finally, bravo to Spielberg for making one of the few truly honest war pictures ever. War is not pleasant. It is not about this super-human nobility and clean victory. No matter which side "wins", everyone loses.

This movie made me think long and hard about what people my age (20) had to go through just 50 years ago. When I saw this film in the theater, I was surrounded by members of the WWII generation, and I could see in their eyes that this was almost too real for them. The ability to create a movie that makes a 20 year old girl in 1999 feel like she was at Normandy in 1944 is an epic talent that should be cherished. "Saving Private Ryan" is beyond a 10. Anyone who doesn't see that should really watch it again.