Steven Storms the Beach---

Rating: 8/10 (3 October 1999)

And Washes Ashore.

Here you have two, not one movies, at the price of one. The Masterpiece, is the opening half hour, and the final half hour battle in the bombed out town. In between, we have Sgt Rock characters, with some trendy gore and UN style stereotypes.
Its essentially a B film with mass amounts of $$, FX expertise and speechifying thrown in. I always am leery of any film that presumes to 'Tell us what WAR is really like'-that is crap. The only way to REALLY tell it as it is-would be to simply stick a camera crew on Omaha Beach or in Stalingrad at the time, and let'em roll; guts and all.
That's it. Here, we have Forest Gump trying to be John Wayne(nice try, but forget it-no way) and a bunch of 20 something directors like Ed Burns pretending they are grunts. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I like the intention of the movie, to show how horrible it all is, and etc.-but the way the film was marketed-its producer telling us its not 'John Wayne up the beach'-that was nuts.
Sure guys, it was TOM HANKS AND STEVEN SPEILBERG up the beach, complete with SAM MALONE FROM CHEERS inland to recieve them. Gimme a break.
You want a realistic war film? Try 'the Big Red One' or 'Platoon'; and the first 30 minutes of this one, too. Skip the rest, it's just a jacked up episode of Combat, without Vic Morrow's credibility and with old Mr. Gump there....
Two ratings: For the Landing sequence and the final battle: ****. For the stuff in between: **. Try again, Steve.