let down by a poor script

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2002)

The battle scenes in this film, particularly the vivid recreation of a beach on D-Day, are surely the most realistic, vivid and gory battle scenes ever depicted. Spielberg shoots the action as if a camera crew were there amongst the men. The first 20-odd minutes are extremely powerful and beautifully shot.
Unfortunately, the great technical merit of the action scenes are let down by the rest of the film. The script is flat so the characters are stuck with being either the cocky Jew, the medic who loves his mum, er mom, or the wise guy new Yorker. The scenes in between the action sequences tend to drag, because there's lots of talking, but no one has anything interesting to say. The scene in the church and in the French town near the end seem to last for hours. There's none of the depth of character or analysis of human behaviour that was apparent in Schindler's list. What made that film so shocking was its objectiveness and absence of sentimentality. The same cannot be said for Ryan.
The film has been criticised for only depicting US soldiers in the war, but this is unfair, since its a film about a squad of US soldiers. Its not about the war Germany, the war is just its setting.
But all in all, I would recommend this film just to see its reproduction of the horrors of war.