American writers these days

Rating: 10/10 (8 July 2001)

I typed a comment about this before, and now I've had time to rethink it. There is only one major source for my distaste for this movie - Robert Rodat. He trashes almost every country he can when he can except America, which he tries to make out as brilliant and valiant and heroic etc. I mean, where were the other armies at the D-Day landings? It wasn't just the Yanks who landed there! And Monty overrated? Come on Robert! The fact that this guy wrote The Patriot only shows his ignorant Brit-dissing even more. Randall Wallace is another culprit of this super duper pro-American-anti-everyone-else sentiment. I mean in Braveheart the Brits are made out to be totally evil, which is just pure rubbish. Plus he scripted Pearl Harbor, which did its damnedest to make the Americans not look stupid over the attack - the only good movie about Pearl Harbor is Tora! Tora! Tora!, which got it's history correct down to the smallest detail.
My major gripe said, this film is gripping from start to finish. The tension really builds up in the landing craft at the start, and the landings really do stun you. Janusz Kaminski's camerawork is a great defining feature of this movie and deservedly won an Oscar. John Williams' score wasn't very apparent, but when it was it was effective enough but rather repetitive. The characters and the moral question behind the story are also well put out to dry, as in why several soldiers for one? And Captain Miller's last words really do express how he felt about going to save Private Ryan.
All in all by my reckoning, a half decent war movie that is needlessly pro-American and disses other countries. Mind you, this is probably the main reason it won any Oscars.