A superb 2/3 movie...

Rating: 7/10 (16 March 2003)

This is one of the most successful attempts of Spielberg to create his masterpiece and it's just off the mark..It suffers from what appears to haunt most Spielberg's efforts that is the 2/3 syndrome.For almost two hours the movie is appropriately realistic raw even and its plot is clever and absorbing .The acting is mostly top class especially from Neeson who balances superbly between shroudness and kindness and Ralph Fieness who incarnates the brutality and insanity of the third Reich and considers Jews subhumans. The cinematography is wonderful as usual and the camera work exemplary.The anti war message is conveyed in a strong shocking manner as is the message for human compassion in the middle of the holocaust.Similar qualities graced "The empire of the sun" .But as it happened in that movie as well , the balance gradually gets lost.Not due to miscalculation but due to a conscious submission to the melodramatic ...The public gets what the public wants? Maybe from a commercial point of view Spielberg's approach is more appealing to the patriotic or peace loving audience that loves the melodramatic. Not so if you belong to the group of people that don't like art to be reduced to a preaching to the converted.Not if you consider realism a virtue in this type of films.Not if you don't like mellow approaches. You can't fault the first two thirds of the movie.The movie is as it is exceptional, but not a masterpiece, by choice..I admire Spielberg for what he can create and has partly created but not what he chose to do to the end of potentially one of the best movies of all times for definitely non artistic reasons.. 7.5 out of 10 (10/10 for the first two thirds and 3/10 for the rest)