Solid, melodramatic war piece

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2012)

"Saving Private Ryan" is certainly a good film, and a major technical achievement, but it is little more than that.
After the stunning first twenty minutes the movie begins to falter. The storyline seems to be based in asking the question 'What is the value of one life?' The characters struggle with risking all of their own lives to save just one. Is duty and honor important enough to die for? What if Ryan turns out to be a complete degenerate? It is a pretty heady, and ultimately unanswerable question. Yet with the modern bits tacked on the beginning and end of the film, Spielberg answers the question for us. This is pure schmaltz made to get one last tug on the heart strings. It cheapens the film. When Hanks admits to being a schoolteacher back home it is the worst kind of melodrama. When the soldier does his bit in the church about missing his mother we somehow know he'll be dead in ten minutes. When they release the German soldier we somehow know we'll see him again. How many clichés and obvious plot devices can one throw into a 'realistic' movie? How about the celebrity cameos that feed a director's ego,but serve only to distract the audience from the film (Hey! Isn't that Ted Danson?) For the most part it is completely overblown, gratuitous melodrama. It isn't even the best war movie ever made, much less the best movie ever. It's worth the three hours, but not much more.