A great, flawed, film

Rating: Null/10 (14 August 1999)

What an amazing first half hour. How could anyone think of war as glorious after seeing that. There are so many fine touches in camera-work and direction that you need to see to believe - the sheep wandering past the unit, the homely sandwiches and so on. So clever to have the rescue unit itself hostile to the rescue - after all, each son who died left a mother bereft, and that is what Ryan himself felt at the end of the film. It is such a shame that the last half hour of the film became a conventional war movie. Spielberg has made a great movie - in parts greater than anything that has ever been made about the Second World War. But his last half hour is an indulgence which lets the rest of the film down. Nevertheless, my father joined the (British) Royal Marines in February 1939 and fought throughout to May 1945, including the Normandy landings. For the first time on screen I have now seen something like what he must have gone through. How did our parents/grandparents do it? And aren't we so lucky that we have not had to?