Not a classic, not even great...just good!

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 1998)

Yes it's a good film. Thought provoking and horrifying, gory and traumatic... but it's not a GREAT film. Why not? Simply because it tries too hard to do too many things and ends up as neither one thing nor the other. Is it a hard-hitting attempt to reveal the bloody futility of war, or is it a "shoot 'em up" Hollywood blockbuster action movie with an unbelieveable plot and overly realistic gore and special effects?
In my very humble opinion it fails as soon as Private Ryan is found. Up to that point all of the horrors of war are exposed for our wretched "entertainment". The senseless (but inevitable) waste of human life, the vile slaughter in the sea and on the beaches, man's inhumanity to man etc, etc...and then all of a sudden it's hello to "Kelley's Heroes II". A handful of battle-weary men thrown together in dire cicumstances, "spitwad" weapons, a few smelly socks and a tub of axle grease, up against 4 tanks, a 120mm gun and 50+ German infantrymen. Well don't we just know who's going to win that one right from the start? And as for the airborne "tank-buster" cavalry arriving just in time??? Please!
Two thirds of the way through, this "potentially Great" movie sold out and died.
One more point, the Stars and Stripes flag at the beginning and end is jingoistic, patronising and insensitive to all the other nations who were involved in the Normandy landings. Men from all over the "allied" world died on those beaches. Contrary to popular belief, the world does not begin and end at the borders of the United States of America.