But then we see the captain can't quite manage to stop his hand from shaking. The front of the boat drops open, the enemy gunfire rips into the first wave of soldiers - and we are brutally shoved into the chaos and carnage along with Hanks and his men. After so many years of seeing movies that reduce violent death to video-game spectacle, audiences may find it difficult, if not impossible, to cope with what happens during this shatteringly brilliant sequence. Throughout 24 minutes of excruciatingly sustained terror, there are no heroic gestures, no defiant wisecracks. Rather, there are desperate men fighting and dying for each step, each inch, they advance forward.
Bullets rip into flesh and ricochet off metal.
Fatally wounded men spill into the water, until the tide runs dark with blood. Screams of the dying often overwhelm the sound of explosions. Medics frantically tend to casualties - until they, too, are cut down by German troops in nearby bunkers. The captain turns to issue an order, and finds a huge hole where the face of another man used to be. It is not the least of Spielberg's achievements here that he definitively demonstrates Truffaut was mistaken.