patriotic tripe

Rating: 4/10 (1 November 1998)

yes: patriotic tripe.
SANDS OF IWO JIMA had a similar line about "duty", and less screen time than RYAN devoted to the Stars and Stripes; FULL METAL JACKET had more harrowing (and intellectually honest depiction of the mind's slip into insanity (as well as containing many of the models for Spielberg's shots in the final shoot-em-up); DAS BOOT achieved an existentialist dimension; ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT(1930) seared into memory the ignorance and naivete of the scared youth on BOTH sides of the battle lines; HEARTS AND MINDS had realistic footage; JURASSIC PARK used the distant roar of the approaching enemy better;
Face it: the Friend of Bill has created a monstrous emotional rollercoaster which is wrapped in mom's apple pie and American boys' mission to "deliver freedom to the world as history's agents." At this juncture in history--1998--such jingoism bespeaks an America desperately searching for a jusification for its increasingly adventurist, amoral, self-serving and self-proclaimed role as World Leader-(and leading debtor)-cum-tyrant.
This is the greatest war film ever made in the second quarter of 1998, and nothing more. Except a potful of patriotic, historically inaccurate, hopelessly implausible, racist, sadistic, and finally just maudlin...well, tripe. It rates a 3 from me, because it is so effortless and shameless a pastiche of war-movies' cliches.
What a sad state the movies are in, when this empty a film is lauded with such superlatives!