More Spielberg melodrama. Yawn.

Rating: 3/10 (26 September 1999)

Sorry, but I don't like being manipulated and constantly being told what to feel, and Spielberg ALWAYS does this in his "serious" films. He should stick to light-hearted adventure stories, at which he is very good.
The opening and closing cemetery scenes were heavy-handed. The subject matter doesn't need flag-waving, Steven, we get the point without you rubbing our faces in it.
The opening battle scene is very well done, except it's voyeuristic and even pornographic. I saw the reaction of the kids in the front row and they were getting off on the blood and gore, just like in a video game. I think Malick's filming of the battle scenes in The Thin Red Line was much more effective -- it puts you in the midst of the grass, fire, smoke, concussive explosions and total chaos and is quite unnerving. Should've gotten the Best Cinematography Oscar.
I cringed at Hanks' line "Earn this". Again, Spielberg seems to think we can't get such insights on our own without them being crammed down our throats. It's insulting. To have Hanks speak that line implies an insult to Damon's character, too.
The line,"Tell me I was a good man" is just awful script-writing. Groan.
Let's see, how can I put this without giving away the plot and therefore having this review banned? Okay, I thought it was really sophomoric to have the German POW that "X" (a main American character who shall remain unnamed) turned loose be the one to kill "X" in the end -- the odds against such a turn of events actually happening were quite overwhelming. To put that in the script was an "in your face" attempt at irony, right out of a bad film school project.
I was mostly disappointed with what could have been a fine film if the director had not done what he always does -- practice overkill and leave nothing to the imagination, underestimating his audience, and propagandizing.
I also think it's offensive to make a "Good Yanks, Bad Krauts" film. My uncles who fought against the German army knew better. This war, contrary to those who want to rewrite history to make it pretty, was about property, not saving the Jews nor stopping fascism (except when fascism threatened other people's property). Nazism was tolerated and even approved of in Britain, France and the U. S. before Hitler invaded France, and Britain and the U. S. turned away Jewish refugees from Hitlerism even after the start of the war. The Americans didn't enter the war to stop Hitler, they made huge profits from it till 1941, and only entered it when the Japanese made it impossible for them to stay out of it. This film's ideology pretends otherwise.
Malick's film is much more accurate and, therefore, much less popular. Based faithfully on the novel by James Jones (who fought in Guadalcanal), it doesn't use war as a way to make people feel good, it tells the truth about war and those who fight in it, not disparagingly but realistically. I care about its characters, because they are believable, not caricatures like those in Private Ryan. The Thin Red Line is all the more uplifting because of its realism, and more enduring.
For those, by the way, who keep writing that we who prefer The Thin Red Line are "pseudo-intellectual", I think they really mean that they themselves are anti-intellectual, a popular stance in the U. S. these days.
From a friend in Canada, where unlike most of you in the States, we take ourselves and our mythologies with a healthy grain of salt.