What is wrong with SPR...

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 1998)

First and foremost, this is an awe-inspiring masterpiece of discomfort. Spielberg has succeeded where Stone failed with NATURAL BORN KILLERS - he has made a movie which genuinely affects its audience and serves as an indictment of the cinematic tradition of defying the violent and the warlike, without running the risk of inculcating a cult of violence as cool among the impressionable and the stupid.
SPR moved me to tears within about ten minutes of the opening credits. Wonderful performances from Tom Hanks (a little saccharine actually), Tom Sizemore and - especially - young Giovanni Ribisi.
As in SCHINDLER'S LIST, Spielberg's camera is uncompromising in its gaze, presenting horrific acts of violence and tragedy unblinkingly and without fanfare. Where the earlier film occasionally strayed into manipulative heart-string plucking, however, SPR treads a fine line bordering on hero-worship. To draw comparison with Oliver Stone again, SPR lacks the sense of futility, helplessness and desperation of FULL METAL JACKET.
But then it is a far more didactic enterprise than was JACKET. And in its full-on, vitriolic condemnation of capital-W War,it succeeds admirably. Nausea, tears, exhaustion are all common amongst people leaving a screening. Blase attitudes and take-it-or-leave-it shrugs are not.
Certainly a film which should be seen and pondered upon at length. There is, however, something wrong with Saving Private Ryan....
D-Day 1944, right? Loads of Allied troops dying their way up the beaches of Normandy, right? Mission in the thick of the front line in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, right?
So... WHY DO WE ONLY SEE AMERICANS AND GERMANS? Where are the British soldiers? Where are the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch? What about the Australians, the Canadians, the Russians? We see a family of three French refugees, but can that really be it? Spielberg seems to be trying to depict WWII as Vietnam but with less greenery and no dope.
Contrary to this film's thesis, WWII was not a war of attrition between the US and the Third Reich. The whole world was involved - hence the first W in WWII. You have to get used to Americocentric conceit in Hollywood movies, but this is one opportunity to present an accurate and unbiased account of the War that has been horribly missed.