Horror of war, never more brutal

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2016)

I had heard about the near 30 minute opening scene, how graphic and scary it was. I had actually dreamed about these scene before watching this film, and there an all too haunting identity to it. This was D day, a.k.a the battle of Normandy, where those small navy boats came onto the shores, and the soldiers were picked off like chickens at a shooting gallery. Many didn't make it ashore, where others that made it ashore, became bloody graphic examples of what this deadly and horrific war was like. This is the most scariest and bloodiest scene I've seen in a war film, where it's near thirty minute duration as it violently depicted what went down, in depth, highly benefited, but made the rest of the other film drop, or seem standard, but I mean that, only in contrast, to the war sequence, which really set the bar high, in one sense. The scene prior to this, in the cemetery, which comes back at the end, makes this story only the more heartbreaking, as we view a sea of graves, just to show you, how shockingly easy the lives of these boys were lost. Now moving on, Captain John Miller (Hanks) assigns a squad to track down one Private Ryan, risking the lives of his squad for this one guy. There are more shockingly violent bits in this too, the atmosphere in the last thirty, resembling that of the ruins in Full Metal Jacket, which unlike that, this one remarkably dodged an R certificate. What surprised me, acting wise, was Vin Diesel as one of Hanks squad, who unfortunately buys it early in the piece, while Hanks wasn't bad, but I have seen better from him, while Barry Pepper again steals their thunder. I like Ted Danson's brief performance too, as another squad captain we bump into on our search for that one party, where his two other brothers didn't make it. I'll be frank, SPR has a very unsettling and frightening aura to it, like I've never felt in any other war film. Another way of saying this, is in the how "easy to die" scenario which which I've never felt stronger as in this. Spielberg, again, has pulled off something respectfully and undeniably brilliant, but as someone who's created the most scariest war film, I've ever seen, he should be widely commended, where this film should of walked away with the best film Oscar.