There are pieces of a good movie here, it's just not a good movie

Rating: 4/10 (27 October 2007)

Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan share similar questions: in the former, how much money is a life worth; in the latter, how many lives is a life worth? Very good questions, and Spielberg ham-handedly beats a response out of us in each film. He employs two story-telling techniques, both to the utmost extreme: visceral sensationalism and morbid sentimentality.
To turn the focus on the movie being reviewed - Schindler's List uses a horror film approach to movie-making to keep us properly frightened and cowering in the corner. At some point it stops being about somber remembrance and turns into a gruesome series of predictions: he'll be shot - he's too overly sympathetic; he'll make it - he had too much screen time to be executed; she'll die - the violin telegraphs it... and so on.
Spielberg's greatest sin is that he underestimates his audience. We don't need to be bludgeoned into three minutes of silence. The atrocity was great, and sixty years later the wounds are still painful. All we need is to be simply ushered into a fresh realization of the holocaust - and Schindler's story is a particularly poignant way to accomplish this.
At some point during the movie Schindler speaks of true power - the ability to pardon. Yet Spielberg drags this movie past the three hour mark, emotionally executing each and every viewer. My edit of this movie would have excised the sloppy and insincere sentimentality, and spared (pardoned) the audience so many streams of blood that the scenes lost any impact the victims' deaths might have contained. (not to mention, my edit wouldn't try so hard to convince that all women in WWII slept topless!)
I also fault the movie for setting Schindler up as Jesus Christ (we're bought with a price!). I'm still trying to decide if Spielberg wants to insult or convert the Jews he is sympathizing with. After Schindler dropped his cross... er, ring in the sand I half expected him to be crucified for war crimes.
I give the film credit for a tremendously impacting ending. We see, and can truly honor for enduring hell, the Jews whom Schindler saved.
For a properly restrained and truly honoring treatment of the topic of the Jews during WWII, watch Episode 9 of Band of Brothers. Thanks for that anyways, Steven.