A disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (7 February 1999)

In lots of movies and documentaries war is being depicted as something glorious, as a time and a place where (mostly good-looking) young men can prove how brave they are. SPR would be different, so I expected. In this movie Spielberg really would show his audience that war is horrific, not heroic.
The first half hour of the movie really was shattering. People who still believe war is an exciting event for young would-be heroes (think: Tom Cruise in Top Gun) should be obligated to watch the Omaha Beach landing-scenes. Because it really makes you experience that war is hell, a sickening, horrible hell.
Of course you can't fill a three hour movie solely with scenes like that of the Omaha Beach landing. To make a good movie, you need more, like good actors, a capable crew, convincing special effects and, the most important, an interesting story. Well, no one will dispute the fact that SPR technically is a masterpiece. The camerawork, the special effects, the sound, they are all overwhelmingly good.
In spite of all these plusses, I really was disappointed by at least two hours of SPR. Because it missed the most important thing a movie needs: an interesting story! The characters weren't convincing. I don't blame the actors for that, they all did a good job. It was the script that I blame, I never forgot I was watching a movie with made-up characters. When a movie is really good, I tend to get so absorbed by the characters that they become real to me, that I start to symphatize deeply with them. This never happened while I was watching SPR. I never felt anything more for Captain Miller and his men then I felt for all the other, anonymous soldiers you see in this movie. And the story, the search for Private Ryan, even bored me sometimes. There were just a few scenes, like the one in which the men were reading the name-tags of the fallen soldiers, that were really compelling.
Three things about SPR I really disliked. First there is the way the German soldier known as "Steamboat Willie" was portrayed. Why is the only German we got to know a little bit such an awkward, silly guy? I'm pretty sure lots of German soldiers were ordinary men who didn't want this war any more then anyone else did. They must have been just as afraid as the American soldiers, they must have felt the same pain and horror. But that's not the way if feels like in SPR. The overall feeling you get is "Americans are good" and "Germans are bad". Second, there is the fight for the bridge. This kind of stuff, the brave heroes who, against all odds, succeed in defeating the enemy, well, this has been done so many times before. This kind of cliche was exactly what I expected SPR to avoid. Third, there is the 'point of view'. You are made to believe that the Omaha Beach-scenes are seen as the memories of the old man on the graveyard. Then, in the last scene, you learn that this man never set foot on Omaha Beach. I felt manipulated in a negative way!
It was very hard for me to grade SPR. Technically, it's an absolute 10. The Omaha Beach-scene was extremely good, and I think it's a real homage to the veterans who were there. But there were too many things I did not like. I decided to give this movie a 7 out of 10.