One of the Most Overrated Films Ever

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2010)

Count me among the group of dissenters that thinks "Saving Private Ryan" is 20 minutes of technically expert film-making capped by 140 minutes of monotonous war film punctuated by treacly and typical Spielbergian emotional histrionics.
Spielberg's attempts at meticulously recreating the Omaha Beach invasion that take up the first half hour or so of this film are stunning. But the film grinds to a halt after that with a lame story and shallow characters that go nowhere. Spielberg wants us all to feel guilty (doesn't he always) about what soldiers in WWII went through, but his way to do that is to throw brutal violence in our faces every few minutes. The thing is, it's not the violence that makes other and better war films bring home the horrors of war to its audience; it's the depiction of what war does to a man's psyche. It's another film from 1998 set during WWII combat, Terence Malick's "The Thin Red Line," that stands as the year's masterpiece about war. But audiences ignored that film because Malick wasn't willing to hold their hands and tell them how they should feel, something Spielberg could teach a class in.
Grade: B