Deeply affecting and thought provoking

Rating: 10/10 (10 August 1998)

One person said characters were static. I thought, given the scope of the film, that the characters were developed very subtly - for example, the scene in which the medic was rewriting the bloody letter home written by the first man killed while confessing a wish that he had not pretended to be sleeping so his Mom wouldn't chat it up with him. Very real.
The camera work was intended to make you feel "first person" intensity, which it did. Try running with 40+ pounds strapped to your back, with a helmet bobbing around on your head, while trying to find some cover. The camera caught exactly what you would "see". It took some visual
adjustment , but was part and parcel to what made this movie effective. I'm not trying to find flaws. I agree that we should - SHOULD - not need
a reminder that war is hell, or that, if we do need it there is something wrong with us. I think that we DO need it. We do seem to forget what it meant that these soldiers took a bullet to gain a beach. There isn't anything "wrong" with us. We just get
complacent. We should remind ourselves any time we are about to romanticize war. We need to do it. Memorial Day and Veterans Day do not just mean long weekends. They stand for something.
And we need to say, "Thank you," not only to the people who sacrificed their lives, but to those who survived as well, and helped to do some part to put an end to it. We should do that by taking up the most difficult burden ever laid on a human being - the one put in the end: "Make it all count for something". How could anyone live up to that? The message of this movie? Do your best to do exactly THAT with your own life. Make it count.