The Best War Movie Ever...

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 1999)

Ok, ok... you say: "This film is full of cliches and Platoon is the best." I've seen Platoon, and I've seen other war movies and no one has touched me more than Spielberg's masterpiece SPR. And why? Because, when I watched the others, I was just watching. When I went to the movies to see SPR, I WAS THERE. I could feel the war in me... I could feel all that human strength fighting against something they did not even know.
Cliche? I'll tell you what is a cliche in a war movie: the man is shot and in slow motion camera he cries and falls on the ground. His friends stop to look at him, and the bullets stop to be shot to them. The dying man says: "Please, tell my girlfriend I love her... i wanted to have been a better man, i wanted to..." (and he dies) At this moment, the viewer's eyes are full of tears and the director of this movie has done what he wanted to: make the viewer cry in a classic war scene. In Spielberg's SPR, the same scene happens like this: the man is shot in real motion camera, he cries, falls on the ground and doesn't stop crying, looking at his body, drowning blood everywhere, desperated, unable to think about her girlfriend. Only one thing passes through his mind "I'm gonna die". He cries it... His friends stop to look at him and are shot too, some lose a leg, some just a foot, others an arm... and the scene left the viewer shocked, and sure that THAT IS WAR, THAT IS REAL.
Of course, Mr. Spielberg committed his mistakes in this movie, as anyone commits in any other film: the opening scene (the old man) is unnecessary, just as the final one. The American flag should be filmed, (after all, Spielberg is a patriot, too) but why forget Canada, France and England flags? R the Americans the only saviors of the world? And, at last, the stereotyped German... why not choose a German with a family, with integrity, honor? Why must they always be bad? I'm sorry to say it to someone so closed-mind as Robert Rodat, but in a war, you don't fight against ONE German, you fight against a country. That German could be GENE KELLY Singing in the rain, but he would still be an enemy. So, why make him BAD?
If you see, the mistakes committed in this movie r not Spielberg's. They r from the screenplayer, the writer. I don't think SPR deserves the Oscar for best Screenplay, but Spielberg is the best director and SPR DOES deserve the title of best 1998 movie, if not, as Academy is so imprevisible and unjust to S Spileberg, may people, at least, make this film eternal, eternal as the remembrances of the worst tragedy men could live in this century: WWAR II!