Great Opening--Overall Pedestrian Effort

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2001)

The opening of this movie is one of the best battle scenes I've witnessed in 50 years of movie viewing. So many appropriate superlatives about this scene have already been written by other reviewers that I can't add anything more.
Unfortunately, once this scene is over the movie becomes a rather pedestrian WWII movie--just too predictable and, at times, stretching one's willingness to "suspend disbelief" to the ultimate and beyond. It's worth watching, but the bulk of the movie is just a rehash of cliches from just about every WWII film made in the 1940's and '50's.
Opening scene rates a 10; the rest of the movie a 4; average 7.