A more mature Saving Private Ryan

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2000)

It's a shame so many people seem not to get this film. It's a shame so many of them need the pedestrian symbolism and manipulative direction of Spielberg to tell them how to feel. It's a shame that at the end of the Twentieth century many people still believe that WWII was fought by John Wayne, rough and tumble cowboys who could kill a whole enemy infantry like they were swatting flies.
To knock a film like The Thin Red Line yet embrace Saving Private Ryan should insult anyone with a conscious, anyone with a family member who fought and/or died in any war. To say that the soldiers were not disillusioned while fighting in WWII is a grave misstatement and an oversimplification. Don't tell me for a second that those who died in the South Pacific or Europe did not regret their decisions. Don't tell me those who died left this world with brave or poetic last words, lauding their God and Country.
The Thin Red Line shows war as continual, frightening, confusing. Saving Private Ryan had its Tom Hanks leading the way to save some anonymous Ryan, oblivious to the fact that there was a war raging all around them and the fate of the world was still up in the air. Remember, D-Day was the turning point, not the victory. The Thin Red Line shows us that little Ryan would've been marched to his death as quick as anyone else, no man was more important than victory.

To call WWII the last good war feeds the propaganda and lies that have survived in our culture since Pearl Harbor. Maybe that's why The Thin Red Line was overlooked by so many. It is an honest contemplative look at war, realistic and not as pedantic as Saving Private Ryan. It does not break the world into Good Guys and Bad Guys. Instead it shows us the haunting similarities between soldiers on both sides. While there is absolutely no question in my mind WWII was necessary, to simplify it to the standards of a Hollywood movie cheapens what was really lost. In war, there is the "us" and "them" mentality, but don't forget that regardless of side, they all died the same.