good opening, goes downhill from that

Rating: Null/10 (8 March 2004)

Well, the movie starts off with a credible depiction of D-Day, not shying away from the insane violence and carnage. very shocking and puts you right in the middle of WW2 combat. Unfortunately the movie goes downhill from there. The production quality is still on a high-level,but the story itself isn`t. Spielberg is too fond of his hollywood-type heroism, and spices his otherwise gritty tale with unecessary blandness. The worst part is the display of the german troops. They are displayed as mindless thugs and not as humans. Even much older movies like "Battle for Arnheim", portray germans in a more acceptable way.
Enemies like the Japanese,Germans,Vietkong and later on the Russians (former WW2 Allies !) are always shown in US-Warmovies as pure Cannonfodder for the Americans.
Back to "Ryan". Spielberg has a fixed mindset about germans, probably heavily influenced by the comic-book nazis of his own "Raiders of the Lost Ark". (which is a good and entertaining movie btw.) He doesn`t trust his story and thinks he has to pump it up with some patriotic music and "heroic" dialogue.
Just terrible. I was very dissapointed. Why is it not possible to make a movie at least trying to show both sides, from a soldiers perspective ?
ah well...