Great battle scenes in an otherwise average movie

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2003)

Maybe my summary line was a bit harsh. Saving Private Ryan is not an average movie, but I don't think it's as great as the rest of the world seems to think. Yes the various battle scenes are gut-wrenching, but the movie overall was slightly disappointing.
Firstly, the film is completely US-centric. I think one non-American character (a German soldier who is begging for his life at the time) gets a speaking role in the film. There is no indication that soldiers from other countries took part in the D-day landings. The American soldiers die horribly, tragically, heroically, dramatically. The German soldiers just die. Bang, grunt, thud: another dead German.
We see all of the tension and fear experienced by the Americans, yet none of that which must have been felt by the opposing Germans. They were, after all, one and the same, merely servants of opposing political masters. Yet the movie completely misses the chance to humanise the enemy, to show that they too are just ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
Saving Private Ryan is, in short, a Hollywood blockbuster, with gory battle bits. The American soldiers are the human good guys, the German soldiers are the inhuman bad guys, war is Hell, but we're better at it than you.

I didn't *hate* this movie, I just didn't think it was worth all of the plaudits which it has received. Tom Hanks is, of course, always watchable, the story rolls along nicely, the battle scenes will keep you on the edge of your seat (or possibly under it), and the anti-war grittiness does outweigh the pro-American good vs. bad slant. For the record, I thought the spin-off TV series Band of Brothers was marginally better.