Simply Great (from a non-war-movie fan)

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 1999)

I'm not especially a fan of war movies (ie, I turn them off the instant I determine that they're a war movie). Maybe this movie represents the culmination of special effects, acting, and directing that is necessary to make a successful war movie?
I like movies that mean something, and I like directors who make movies that mean something. I can't help but compare this Spielberg movie with his other WWII movie, Schindler's list. Both films have detailed WWII in ways that are at the same time nakedly objective and blatantly subjective.
Spielberg tries to scrape some humanity from the holocaust in Schindler's List, while at the same time offering up the horrific imagery that was the reality. He manages to do the same thing in Saving Private Ryan.
John Miller, an army officer, leads a team of WWII soldiers on a mission to find James Ryan, whose three brothers have been killed in the war. Ryan will be sent home thanks to a high-ranking officer who decides that it would be unacceptable for the Ryan family to receive yet one more notice of death.
Throughout the film, the characters question the value of saving one person in the midst of the destruction and murder of many other soldiers. The reality of war and the movie hits home when Miller, amidst losing men and trying to find another to send home, convinces his men to risk their lives because the main objective "...is to win the war."
There are some many different levels on which this film is chilling, and this movie is especially good at portraying how characters in their different stages of life interpret what's going on. And really, nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Great movie.