Dirty Dozen for the 90s

Rating: 5/10 (2 February 2005)

There was a time when Spielberg felt the film-making fraternity had overlooked him. Those days may be over, but the reasons why it happened, sadly, are not. The lesson seems to be, make a film about the holocaust and be magically transformed into a critical heavyweight.
The sad fact is that Schindler's List is (in my opinion) a very good film, but not a great one  it is too heavy handed. I am in a minority. Likewise, bolt on 20 minutes of startling cinematography (which was not part of the original Spielberg grand plan) and transform a fairly pedestrian, unoriginal war-is-naughty-but-devilishly-exciting flick into a major cinematic event.
Can someone who loves this film as Art (I choose capitals for its ironic effect) explain how it was that the film managed to spawn a whole series of computer games? Were Spielberg's motives so noble, so pure and so righteous that he had to further propagate his "war-is-naughty" message to the fans of first person shoot-em-ups? Now you may argue that it is hardly Spielberg's job to worry about such things. This may be true  but you have to wonder why it was that Saving Private Ryan is so eminently suited to such a transfer. It is difficult, for example, to anticipate a Thin Red Line or Apocalypse now video game. It would also difficult to paste scenes from Thin Red Line onto, say, Star Wars (the Millennium Falcon coming out of the sun, for example) and not be able to spot the difference.
At best Saving Private Ryan is a lukewarm, melodramatic, overly sentimental paean to good ole America, good ole family and the importance of killing nasty Germans before they kill you. The beach landing is extraordinary  I'm not denying it. But pardon me if I'm holding out for something more subtle. 5½ /10