What a toss....

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2001)

Okay, I'll start with something positive. Those scenes - you know, *those* scenes, which everybody would not stop crapping on about being so bloody brilliant, that is the opening battle scenes of the D-Day invasion - are done, yes, almost brilliantly. Perhaps it was merely the choice not to pull any punches in portraying graphic deaths and mutilations, (or maybe it was just the fact the volume was cranked up to extreme rock gig levels at the cinema I was in), but the battle scenes of this movie were actually done very, very well. I - and I say this as one who has watched one hell of a lot of war movies over the years - was quite impressed.
That being said, the rest of the movie was an utter crock of s**t. I've probably seen worse, but when it's accompanied by the kind of hype this one came hand in hand with, it's hard to remember that fact. I think the problem for me was that it purported to be so much *more* - more of what I don't know, 'art' maybe, or serious historical narrative, or cinematic realism, perhaps - but really, it wasn't even just a good old shootem'-bangem' war movie. Personally, I like my war movies best when they're high on the intellectual ponderings of the ambiguous nature of good and evil and all that pretentious style jazz. However, I'm also rather partial now and then to a good old, superficial war action flick with lots of fake violence and intriguing plot twists of the Alister Maclean variety.
This film failed on all accounts. It tried to be an intelligent, thoughtful movie about the horrors of war and the nature of heroism, but frankly, it stank. Here's the litmus test for this film - take out the aforementioned well done battle scenes, and what do you have? A tired, old, extremely cliched, badly written, and above all, boring, war movie of the kind we all thought the war movie genre had moved on from decades ago. But hey, I shouldn't just bag it out without some reasons, now, should I?
Firstly - if you're going to hype up about historical accuracy in the promotions for your movie, at least make sure the damn thing actually is historically accurate. Yet, as far as actual history goes, this movie is so inaccurate they may as well claimed WWII consisted of martians invading New York and the Americans fighting them off (oh, hang on, that was the season before's blockbuster). Now, I understand that this is a movie, not a documentary, and certain dramatic elements are necessary to sustain interest, (not that they worked). It's fiction. Fine, I'm happy with that - in fact, I'll go as far to say that in normal circumstances I don't give much of a toss whether it has any historical accuracy at all. Only in this case historical accuracy was one of the selling points of the damn film.
For all you kiddies who may get your history lessons from the movies, let me just repeat - this movie is very, very badly HISTORICALLY INACCURATE. If you want to know exactly how, as I don't have time to go into every detail here, go look it up. You know, in a *book*.
(Scary aside here: I used a military metaphor with a bunch of fifteen year olds recently, who looked at me blankly at mention of the Gulf War and had no knowledge whatsoever of the social, cultural and political circumstance surrounding WWII. Yet their eyes all lit up with recognition when, in desperation, I turned to Saving Private Ryan to illustrate my point. Ugh.)
Yes, before you ask, I have studied the period. Extensively. And frankly, if the Germans were as dumb as they were portrayed in this movie, why did it take so long for US to win the war? Oh, and another thing - just where was everyone else? I know criticisms of Hollywood being overly US-centric are so common as to be cliched themselves these days, but really, as far as I can see from this movie, the Americans were the *only* ones in the war. I'm sure they only let the Germans in because to have Americans fighting Americans would have produced just a tad too much ambiguity, and we couldn't have that, now, could we? (I must admit, I'm getting a bit bored with the whole America saves the world again thing... though at least in 'Armageddon' I could laugh at Bruce Willis' sacrifical ending. One of the top ten hysterical film moments of the decade, that one.)
The acting was pretty much as you'd expect, Hanks was fine, the rest backed him up without any major problems, I didn't truly notice the performances to tell you the truth, either good or bad. The sets were, of course, wonderful, to back up the elaborate battle scenes. The rest, well, what else can I say?
Characters were cliched, badly so. The nature of war was reduced to a very superficial good Americans versus evil Germans, and - *shudder*, dread I say it, - a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Not even cheap, b-grade action flick war films rely on that foolish mantra anymore. We've seen it all before, it's boring, and it's above all, *dumb*.
(Talking about dumb, another scary aside: Walking out of the cinema after seeing this film, a twenty something couple were walking arm in arm just ahead of us. She asks him: "What war was that?" He replies: "The Vietnam War, baby." Oh, the humanity.)
All in all, maybe I'm a fool for expecting something worthwhile to come out of all the money and effort spent on this film - I should know better, big budget blockbusters rarely, if ever, deliver. This one purported to be more than just a blockbuster, however. It promised thoughtful intelligent treatment of the subject matter. Unfortuantely, it failed. Miserably.