Most realistic war movie? I don´t think so.

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2000)

(This might contain spoilers.)
Call me crazy, but as a movie SPR is not more realistic than, say, the ´poetic´ Thin red line. Especially during the final scenes, it has the feeling of an old John Wayne flick, when our brave heros fight against an evil, much superior but dumb enemy, and in the last moment, when everything seems lost, the cavalry arrives and saves the day. And beside that, who destroyed the french village where this final battle takes place? Apparently not the Americans (of course), but when Paris fell after a six week campaign in 1940, the war in France was over and there was no need for the Germans to destroy villages in the far west. In terms of realism, movies like Das Boot or Hope and Glory, and I am sure, many other films, that I have not seen yet, are superior to SPR. You might refer to it as the most realistic depiction of the day on Omaha Beach, that´s all.
But the first 20 minutes are truly devastating. Utterly brilliant in its choreography. It is not possible to recreate Omaha Beach on the screen, but Spielberg did his (or anyones) best to give the audience a hindsight, what happened to those brave men in that battle. After this first act, the movie goes pretty straight downhill. I didn´t care for the characters. The members of the SPR-Squad are a bunch of stereotypes, representing the most average and archetypical group of American WWII soldiers you can imagine. I believe, this is done by purpose, and a bad idea, because without interesting characters, a movie cannot be that good. Therefore, it has a story, not character driven plot, that drags unfortunately heavily in the middle hour of the movie. Some are irritated by the patriotism and complaining (Where are the British, the French, the Australians, etc.), but hey, this was made by Americans for Americans about Americans, and that´s o.k. In fact, after this and the Korean war, the US-boys might never have been the entirely good ones again. In summary, without the brillant first battle, SPR would be only a mediocre war flick. 6.5/10