Sentimental film about D-Day has both flaws and merits

Rating: 6/10 (2 March 2011)

I wasn't too impressed with this film when I saw it more than a decade ago. It's a very corny and sentimental retelling of the landing in Normandy during World War II and subsequent battles in France. The film starts and closes in a veterans cemetery during the present times (that is, around the time it was filmed), and perhaps one of the reasons that the filmmakers made it so sentimental is that around the time it was released, and for obvious biological reasons, many WW2 veterans started dying. I remember that another film dealing with World War II was released at around the same time, Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which dealt with the war in the Pacific and it was far more gripping and stronger and far less sentimental movie. Private Ryan opens with a now famous scene of the landing in Normandy that is very well done, but the film sort of goes downhill (though not catastrophically) from there on. The character of the German prisoner, for instance, is very crudely written and performed. I have to say, however, that one thing that impressed me about the movie is that it shows American soldiers killing German soldiers as they were surrendering. This undoubtedly happened quite a lot in World War II (and in many wars, I suppose), yet few films show such things. And Spielberg shows this matter of factly, he doesn't give moral judgment on this. For this honesty, I praise the movie. But on balance, I think this movie is only fair.