The Best Movie Ever Made..or not

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 1999)

Laughable dialogue, hackneyed acting, war film cliches piled high (like Spielberg grafted on every single famous war movie scene he'd ever seen into a contradictory, muddled mish-mash: War is hell, war is noble, war is spirit changing, war is savage, war is uplifting, war is horrible, war is brotherhood, war is ironic, war is epic, war is petty etc. etc. this is how he cons the audience into concluding "this is the best war movie ever made," that and the fact that many viewers are secretly titilated by the flying limbs and exploding bodies peppering this best war movie ever made. I can just picture Stevie thinking 'I'll take this bit of Das Boot and combine it with Guadalcanal Diary and and then throw in some Apocalypse Now style irony and then...').
Brilliant premise, as if the generals planning the largest sea-land invasion in history are worrying about a poor mother in Iowa. I like how all the characters are about as multi-layered as "The Dirty Dozen," the cynical quipster Brooklyn, the clumsy rookie, the fast talking, Nazi hatin' Jew, the bible quoting expert-marksman southerner, the muscular guy, etc. etc.) Ridiculous monologues (Private Ryan: "Picture a girl who took a nosedive from the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down. Haw Haw." this from a character who symbolically represents America and has the movie named after him), banal bawdy soldier banter (Ed Burns "She's a 44 Double E-who ah!")
My favorite part is when our heroes are behind enemy lines and then casually stumble around and tell jokes in loud voices-fitting with the film's total lack of military realism, especially the action movie ending where the plucky heroes take out a legion of tanks with Richard Dean Anderson-like "sticky bombs". Silly patriotism, maudlin and sappy John Williams score... and don't forget buckets of Sam Raimi style gore so critics think it's an art film (it's so violent, it must be important)! Still, nice photography by Kaminski and the opening bloodbath is effective though significantly overrated. As far as I'm concerned, Stevie peaked at "Jaws". Go see "The Thin Red Line" instead. It may be flawed and too slow for audiences who found "The Matrix" to be thrilling cinema but Compare Malick's believable portrayal of the confused Japanese soldiers (who by the way all behave differently to war's horrors and are individuals) with Stevie's portrayal of the Germans as evil double crossing villains not far removed from the kooky Nazis in his thrilling Indiana Jones trilogy. Unfortunately the world is more complex than as seen through the eyes of Spielberg or Frank Capra (although both excel at propaganda). One of the most jingoistic widely acclaimed films in recent memory( and the seventh best film EVER according to the handy Internet Movie Database).