Gut wrenching depiction of Normandy invasion

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2007)

Reading several of the negative comments about this film, I concluded that they could be grouped into a handful of categories, the pedantic, the America haters, and those who find innate fault with the Spielbergian tendency to manipulate the audience. For those in the Spielberg hating camp, I would ask, What do you expect? Audience manipulation is every bit a hallmark of a Spielberg film as a sappy ending is to a Capra film or existential Jewish angst is to an Allen film.
As for the other two categories, it doesn't pretend to be an historically accurate film, it is a dramatization. For the people that feel that Spielberg depicts the Americans as purely good or the Germans as purely evil, I would ask you to go back to two scenes, one where GIs summarily execute a surrendering German, and second, the look of compassion in the eyes of the German sniper when the GI he has just shot is trying to hand off a letter to his family.
That said, I would focus on the technical aspects of the film. The initial scene of the invasion looks just like first hand accounts of the Omaha beach invasion I have read. Veterans of the landing who have seen the film have attested to the authentic look and feel of the film. Perhaps what I find most striking is Spielberg's use of old style cameras and film stock that give the movie an old newsreel type flavor.
I won't argue with anyone who accuses the actual mission as being unrealistic--I would say that the mission itself is secondary to the storytelling art. It takes little vignettes assembled from stories I have heard over and over from WW2 vets and tells them succinctly.
Hank's character suffers from PTSD, known then as "battle fatigue" ; Vin Diesel's character was the guy who forgot for one second to keep his head down and it cost him; the interpreter overcomes his initial cowardice after it costs his buddy's life; overcome with emotion, another character wants to summarily execute an unarmed German, but is talked out of it; two opposing soldiers who have lost their arms attack each other hand to hand. All of these stories are archetypal and universal among veterans who survived the war.
These characters represent the amalgam of experience of all combat soldiers; similar to Platoon, its unrealistic to believe that one small group of soldiers experienced them all, but as a dramatization the story is excellently filmed and told.