..pretty near perfect..

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2006)

This film is a heartbreaker, because 53,000,000 men died - all over the world - to prevent that deadly stunning Omaha Beach battle. Yet, came The Korean War; the attempted invasion of Cuba; The Vietnamese War; The Gulf War; The Somalian War (we turned-tail and ran); that mess in Afghanistan (which has never been conquered); and now the fiasco in Iraq, the cradle of civilization as we know it. There's a tale making the rounds that our president was upset because "they tried to shoot my Daddy", he wanted to get Sadam. Hmmmm.....how many times do you think we've tried to do that? Doesn't assassination go with leadership?
"Saving Private Ryan" should have been a graphic lesson that all wars are useless bravado AND "hell"- except for those who win ! - because it is inhumane for one sovereign country to attempt to dictate to another. An anonymous commentator wrote "let's hope that this is the last war." Have they been living in a vacuum for a couple of generations, or perhaps too young to have experienced the horror of wartime? Perhaps WW 2 was supposed to be "the war to end all wars," but that completely dismisses man's inhumanity toward man. Some races just don't like other races, as we are seeing in Iraq - and they all are from the same race ! If you can read between the lines of the headlines today, the next war will be over the lack of water or a specific religion.....or some belligerents idiot will launch an atomic weapon that will destroy life as we know it. If that is going to happen, please let me know when so I can get right under it.
No one has mentioned watching "Into the Breach", which depicts the basic training-period the actors were forced to go through.....just like regular "grunts". One of the actors stated he would not do that again. All of them hated it, but all of their roles were greater for having experienced it.
"Saving Private Ryan" is near perfect in all ways, acting through direction through casting through cinematography through realism. My opinion is that Tom Hanks underplayed his role to make a point that ordinary men usually get the biggest responsibility in battle. It's "the grunts" who do the fighting - the bigwigs are behind in a safe area: "Blackhawk Down" serves as a perfect example. Sizemore WAS the seasoned warrior, and played his role superbly. Barry Pepper (in an entirely different role than in "The Green Mile") gave us a believable soldier who took his fighting seriously, but asserting "The Lord in My Shepherd". Masterful. Matt Damon was brilliant, as he is in all of his roles; his statement "these are the only brothers I have left" was a natural turning to those who had become his brothers. "Upham" made me cry, because I understood his cowardice - he didn't try to hide it - it was palpable. Quite frankly, I didn't recognize Ted Danson, quite a star in his day, in the film. Spielberg knew what he was doing, and did it.
The most specific demonstration in this movie is how different the fighters in "Saving Private Ryan" are from modern-day fighters: "Jarhead" will show you that. Recruiting our youngest men to become killers is criminal - except, some of them have no other route to make their way in our world.
We needed this movie - to remind us that we are on the way to a collision with the rest of the world. Brits decried they were not part of this battle - they were up at another beach, being killed just as brutally. All of the countries involved made the same sacrifice. Our Memorial Day honors all of those who lost their lives for freedom. If we are looking for movies to merely demonstrate what a great sound-system we have, that's pitiful.
Until another ones comes along, "Saving Private Ryan" IS the best war-picture we've had - everyone should see it.