A Technically Brilliant Film with a Mediocre Script

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 1999)

No film in 1998 was more hyped by critics than this film. The First 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan does not disappoint. The editing, sound and camera work are so energized (combined with graphic violence) that the sense of being in battle is more real than any film I have seen. Also, Spielberg is the first director to use the grotesque violence of the Coen brothers and Tarantino in a war movie where it actually feels more natural. All of this makes for some very thrilling moments. But while Saving P. Ryan is a technical tour de force its script is not of the high standard as the rest of the film.
The main story (let's find our guy) is routine for a war film. So, the development of the characters is very important to make the movie work. In this regard Saving Private Ryan for the most part was mediocre. I did not feel connected to most of these characters. There was too little dialogue for them to be real. Many war movies deal with the squad under pressure. Eight Iron Men (1952) comes to mind as doing a better job of showing how people cope with this.
Saving P. Ryan also presents us with the horrors of war. The best movie to confront this subject is Apocalypse Now. Saving P. Ryan by contrast to Apocalypse Now seems to have its morality upside down. The most interesting character in the film, the interpreter, learns that the best thing to do with prisoners is to shoot them. There is no adequate comment on this brutality in the movie.
The effectiveness of a final scene is essential for a high quality film and the one in Saving P. Ryan falls apart. The emotion shown by the actors works but the dialogue makes little sense as the final message of the movie. Because the film almost ignores the big picture about why we fought World War 2, it tries to make some sense of the loss of so many lives on an individual level, by private Ryan himself. This cannot be done. The justification of war, if any, is a cause for the greater good; i.e. ending slavery or stopping the Nazis. There is no other way to make sense of war and Spielberg should have used these issues.
Saving Private Ryan got what it deserved at the Oscars; the award for best direction, editing and some technical awards. It is very well made but has a script with too many flaws.