Tom Hanks+Steven Spielberg=Masterpiece. You'd Think, Wouldn't You?

Rating: Null/10 (17 March 1999)

I wasn't all that enthusiastic about paying to see this when it first came out, but as a friend lent me a video CD, I took the time to watch it. The result: a major disappointment.
The story is all over the place, not telling a continuous narrative, but a series of escapades that do not remotely further the storyline. Instead they show some ambiguous moralising that simultaneously condemns and celebrates warfare. The story has very little new or original to say beyond the old chestnuts of war being hell and its corruption of humanity.
The acting is also fairly lazy. Tom Hanks seems so lacking in talent that gives the impression that he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, and Matt Damon and the rest of the cast are so laid-back that I suspect most of them are acting in something else on another sound-stage. The opening beach landing, and most of the violent encounters during the remainder of the film are somewhat ludicrous (people burning to death three feet from water; a sniper being shot by a bullet travelling down his scope into his eye; Mellish's death). It doesn't matter if it's realistic, it still looks bizarre. The production is quite good and suitably colourless, but scenery a good film doth not make.
In summary, this is a poor film, in which high production values fail to hide a feeble script and indifferent acting. But then almost any film could be guaranteed a big US gross and a clutch of Oscars when it's about American soldiers being "heroic". It is therefore not surprising that Frank Darabont had his name removed from the script. Had I been in his position, I would have boycotted the damn thing.