pathetic.

Rating: 2/10 (28 May 2000)

The movie starts off in blazing hell, 15 minutes of stahlgewitter, men screaming, scattered and dying in a visual assault of maimed bodies and detached limbs. Without a doubt one of the most shocking and memorable depictions of war ever shot. Unfortunately the movie takes a big dip from that point on. Instead of showing us the absurdities of war, something the plot could well have brought across, Spielberg laborously evolves the movie around trusted values like male comradeship, loyalty and heroic patriotism, blasting the genre of the american war movie 30 years into the past. Combined with the effort of Hollywood's most pretentious actor, Tom Hanks, and a criminally tacky score makes this one of the most pathetic war movies ever made.
Terrence Malik's "Thin Red Line", which it incidently sunk at the box offices, shows what this movie could - should have been.