Awful and dated vs. great acting and characters

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2015)

I first watched this movie years ago on German television and later in English on DVD and my perception of it changed quite a bid. When I first watched it I was in a phase of looking for moral and bright heroes in movies. This movie has none and it utterly disgusted me. When I watched it again I saw something completely different. I give this movie a rating which is far off from the majority but there are quite a few reasons for it: 1. This is a war movie which wants to show the brutality and maybe(?) senselessness of war in an authentic way. The beginning scene is pretty good at that and is rightfully one of the most famous movie scenes of all times. After that the movie completely falls apart. The Germans just become puppets which can't harm the heroes neither from perfect positions nor with 10-1 odds. Its absurd and worse than any 50s war movie I have ever seen. Even John Rambo would laugh about this. I would call it racism but then again Spielberg made Schindler so I guess despite him hating Nazis (And rightfully so) he doesn't hate all Germans. 2. It really feels dated to me because of 1. Since then band of brothers and letters from Iwojima came out which are much better depictions of WWW and would deserve the rating this movie has. Things like the bullet going through the sniper vision are also extreme 90s cheese. 3. On the other hand the acting is still great from many of the actors. Tom Hanks just delivers. He is the cliché of the good man in a bad war being forced to do what he does but he really nails it. As cringeworthy as this cliché is I would say Hanks does it best. Very good. Dialogue is good and characters act believable in the boundaries of the movie. 4. Action is also pretty decent. If you like stuff blowing up its as good as it gets. 5. My main problem I had watching it the first time still holds up. The movie has insane moral values. The German prisoner they don't shoot is betraying his promise later on and gets killed for that. WTF? Its awful but whatever, he is only one of quite a few Germans they didn't have to kill but did. The enemy in this movie are really not treated like humans. This really is a weakness of the movie but I think most movie viewers don't even recognize that and that is a problem. Letters from Iwojima is so much better. Final thoughts: It really is the Fury of the 1990s but much better acted, with better dialogue and embarrassingly(for Fury) better effects. I still miss more modern stuff like portraying the enemy as humans and the vulnerability of everyone in the war. Ryan only has that in the beach scene although the Germans have no face their either.