Depicts the horror and the violence of war

Rating: 4/10 (23 November 2013)

When most people talk about this movie they usually refer to the violence. The extent of the violence portrayed at the beginning of the movie was enough to attract an R rating, though this was lowered to an MA rating because of the purpose of the violence. When I spoke to people about it they seem to dwell upon this point and even talked about the images that went through their minds when they went to sleep and woke up. The image that went through my mind was that of the soldiers under water getting struck by the bullets.
The movie opens with the landing at Normandy and graphically shows the horror of this beachhead. This part of the movie I thought was the best part because it really draws out the horror, futility, and waste of war. People were getting healed only to be shot and the bloodbath was intense. The impact of this scene was even greater when three brothers, in three different locations, are killed and their mother is due to receive notice of their death on the same day. Thus the decision is made that they must travel into France and rescue Private Joe Ryan, a paratrooper who was misdropped.
The major theme in this movie is the horror of war and this is picked up at the beginning and the whole goal. Mother Ryan is devastated because three of her son's are dead and thus the US army chooses to rescue the forth son because the war has had a great impact on her already and they decide that they need to comfort her by returning to her her only son.
Yet there is a purpose behind this war, and even though we look at the immense waste, especially in the beginning, we are reminded through the rest of the movie that the cause they are fighting for is just. They are fighting an oppressive power that intends to enslave the world and as such they are fighting for a noble cause. Even though the cause may be noble, we are reminded that this war brought about an immense waste of life.
The violence was graphic at the beginning but as the movie draws near to the end the violence becomes more glorified. The scene that comes to mind is when the soldiers on the tank are shot to pieces with the chaingun. This scene, though graphic and probably realistic, is still, to me, glorified.
Purpose is another theme in this movie. The purpose of the mission is to rescue one young man, and throughout the mission they are complaining that they are not helping the war progress. Tom Hanks talks about how when he loses a man he thinks of the thousands of lives that he has saved, but there is an ominous feeling that there is no point to this mission but to save a pathetic little kid; thus it is ironic that when they do find Private Ryan, he refuses to leave his post because they hold one of the only two bridges that Rommel can bring his tanks across to repel the Allied landings.
Salvation is another theme that runs through this movie. Unfortunately it is salvation by works. When Ryan is saved, Hanks says to him, "earn it," suggesting that he must now pay back in good deeds for what Hanks has done for him. Then fifty years later he asks his wife (in front of a large family) if he has been good, to which his wife replies, "Yes". This I feel is quite irritating because it suggests that we can earn our salvation, which is not possible. Paying back bad deeds with good is like paying off a loan with a credit card, it simply gets you nowhere. Our sin is so bad and twisted that there is no way we can earn our way into God's good books. Instead we must rely upon what he has done for us, and that is punished his son Jesus instead of us and by trusting this we will be forgiven for what we have done.
Saving Private Ryan, I think, has a lot of potential, but unfortunately it falls down in a number of places. I found that the end was very disappointing especially when it seemed to be building up to some very thought provoking ends. Steven Spielburg has the potential to make to earth shattering movies, but he seems to always fall back onto Hollywood sensationalism.
(The low rating was on the principle that it won too many Oscars, taking them away from movies that really deserved them.)