Unbelievable realism

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 1999)

Like anyone else I was not only spellbound but also made very uneasy by the opening scene. There was a specific part of that scene that I have never witnessed in a war movie before, one of stark realism that I can attest to because of a tour in Vietnam. As the landing craft begin to lower their ramps there is the vision of many of the men being cut down by German machine guns ashore. I say "vision" because you don't hear the sounds of the guns as you would in the average war movie. Instead what you hear is the sound of the rounds striking the men and the sides of the craft. This fits with the very real tenet that you never hear the one that gets you. Obviously because of the speed of sound you take the hit before you hear the report providing you're lucky enough to hear it and if you do is not a loud report, rather a sometimes faint one depending upon the distance of the shooter from your position. I have heard leaves all around me being clipped by enemy fire and can honestly say I don't recall hearing the shots responsible. This is the realism that Spielberg provided during that scene and it was a bit unnerving. Later in the film I noticed that after the firefight at the radar station where the American medic was killed, the same number of GI's are seen walking across a field as had walked across another field prior to the contact. This obvious editing mistake was actually good for me because it put the movie in its proper perspective, the fact that that was what it was; a movie. Considering the fact that the rest of the thing was brutally realistic I was glad to have had that little error to fall back on. Otherwise I might have been tempted to believe that it wasn't just a movie at all. My opinion of this film, one of the best of all time if not the top. I can watch it several times and I will.