This is the most emotive - and best - war movie ever made.

Rating: 9/10 (4 November 1999)

I don't normally speak in superlatives, but I honestly have never been more affected by a film than I was with Saving Private Ryan. I was near tears 5 minutes into the movie.
As the ramps on the landers dropped and wave after wave of Allied troops were immediately cut down by German machine-gunners, I sat in horrified silence. A single tear rolled down my cheek. That tear was followed by a dozen others. And as the terror continued in front of my unblinking eyes, those dozen were joined by two dozen more. I now understood - or at least had a better understanding of - why I never want to be involved in a war.
Spielberg's re-enactment of D-Day at Omaha Beach stands as one of the single-most brilliant pieces of film ever shot. It also shows cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and editor Michael Kahn to be two of the most inventive minds in their respective fields. Kaminski's shaky, newsreel-style hand-held photography and point-of-view shots and his willingness to use varying quality film stocks, over and under-expose shots and play with film speeds provide the opening battle with a total lack of visual continuity which fits in perfectly with the confusion Spielberg wanted to create. And Kahn's editing progressed the film through that confusion, making a story out of a mess of body parts and beautifully showing the push from the water to the ridge. His brilliant work on Captain Miller's (Tom Hanks) temporary deafness moments alone must have taken days, if not weeks.
For proof of the Normandy scene's authenticity, ask the veterans. Many sent Spielberg kudos (check the Trivia link for this movie), and many are known to have suffered horrible flashbacks after seeing this film. That's proof enough for me.
Oh yeah...the rest of the movie was pretty damn good as well. I still wonder how this film ever lost the best picture Oscar to Shakespeare In Love, which will be forgotten in 2 years (if it hasn't been forgotten already).
One final note: All those who complained about the mistaken identity of the old man in the opening scene, you were not being tricked into thinking he was Captain Miller (Tom Hanks). If you were being tricked, Spielberg would've had a shot of Captain Miller's eyes immediately following the extreme close-up of the old man's eyes. Instead, we see the beach, then a couple of shots of the landing craft making their way toward said beach. Wake up, people...this was not meant to fool you. You fooled yourselves.
9.5 out of 10, the half mark lost for the lack of representation of other Allied nations (U.K. and Canada, especially) on D-Day, and for Ted Danson.