Hyperbolically overrated

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 1999)

My sympathies to the authors of the few comments critical of this film. You are not alone. The legion of fans this movie has accumulated seem to treat its detractors like Martians.
The film is hysterically overrated, and even the Omaha Beach sequence isn't all its cracked up to be. As someone who has seen a lot of Italian horror movies, the graphic violence didn't affect me. Some might think the comparison is inappropriate, but this is a MOVIE, after all, not actual battle footage. Critics droning on about the "realistic", "authentic", "true-to-life" depiction of the "horrors of war" are responding more to the DreamWorks press kit than to the film itself, since I can't imagine many walked out of the theater thinking to themselves "that's exactly how I remember WWII".
Regarding Spielberg's teachings on the "horrors of war" (a subject so well-covered in movies it sounds like a cliche), it's nothing you can't get from scores of other films from directors like Ford, Aldrich, Coppola, Lean, Stone, etc. and you're better served by most of them. I'd especially suggest Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory or almost any of Sam Fuller's WWII or Korean war films. The only thing SPR has on any of them is gore.
The drama between the (type) characters is hackneyed and hollow, John Williams' score is slopped on like emotional fingerpainting, and the politics are infantile and shallow. The action sequences are OK, but not as good as the last Indiana Jones movie. Spielberg's most original WWII film remains 1941.