Nice, but sentimental and historically flawed

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2007)

Summary Saving Private Ryan a good movie, but it is a times painfully sentimental, American centred and, while suggesting realism, historically flawed.
Sentimental because the movie is laden with strong emotional moments. The most marked of which is the one when the aged Ryan drops to his knees at the grave of a the captain who saved him exclaiming, "did i do good?".
American centered because, while the us characters are lifelike all others are not. Most absurd are the Germans. For instance the climax of the movie sees the us cast being attacked by SS men. SS where no that old(average age of SS rank and file was between 17-21)but they where also not bald. Nor all that ugly. Nor that inept(front assaults with what is obvious a 20 mm gun is a laugh, tiger tanks where general deployed in groups, not in single instances, tanks where usually covered by infantry to prevent them from being ambushed by enemy infantry etc.) But most of all: there where no SS at that moment in time at that place. The SS units moving up to Normandy which could have intervened where delayed by an exceptional campaign of sabotage and interdictions. The airborne where in fact opposed by regular infantry and the unreliable ost-truppen most of the time. The only crack units that crossed swords with the airborne in early June where the fallschirmjaeger unit's near ST Lo. These did not posses tiger tanks.
The story while breathing an air of being historically true is in fact mostly true to the American part, all the others are just to embellish the story. In this movie the US cast had to fight the SS equipped with tigertanks because in the US mind frame that was the best the Germans had to offer. (ironically: an inquiry among us soldier what they feared most put the tiger tank at the top of the list, it's ironical because of the 1350 odd produced tiger tanks 2/3 went to the east-front, 1/3 to the south and west front. What reached the Normandy front(running the gauntlet of interdictions and sabotage) where mostly deployed against the English sector and not the US sector(yes more than 50% of the forces landed where non us). The chance therefore that the us airborne would have been facing tigertanks in the early days of the invasion was equal to zero.
And then the strange plot twists. The main characters land on Omaha beach, giving birth to one of the most intense movie scenes every filmed. It had to be Omaha because it was the hardest fought for. But then comes the weird part: the heroes are charged with saving Ryan who could have been better reached with less hassle by starting from Utah beach, which was closer to the drop zones and less opposed by the Germans. No the logical move would be to be shipped to the other beach but instead the story let's the saviors take a round-abound trip of 30 odd kilometres through enemy held territory without any explanation given. The movie wasn't aiming to be the historically accurate, it was a movie which made heroes of soldiers who did their job, despite misgivings and in the face of adversity. I somehow feel that the way the movie display heroism is wrong, that it is detracted in the way this movies tells the story. The stories main emotion is exemplified by the sentimental looking guy who looks at the stars thinking of home, murmuring something about the cakes his mother made for him when he was ten. Investigations into the mindset of the average soldier paints another picture. Home was another planet, there was no time to look at the stars, if you had that time, you went to sleep, for there was always a lack of sleep. If you didn't sleep you ate or drank. Instead of creating a band, veteran soldiers shut themselves of from others because most of those others would be dead within a months time. There might have been a band, but it wasn't one of brothers. It was a band of survivors. Like Letters of Iwo Jima it isn't an overtly political statement, but it is historically flawed and overtly sentimental to the point of being untrue.
Nevertheless it is still a good movie that should be looked at as being fiction and the sentimental part can be skipped and the historical vaults forgiven.