In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

weighed down by tired plot lines and spielberg 's reliance on formulas ,
_ saving private ryan _ is a mediocre film which nods in the direction of realism before descending into an abyss of cliches .
there ought to be a law against steven spielberg making movies about truly serious topics .
spielberg 's greatest strength as a director is the polished , formulaic way in which every aspect of the film falls carefully into place to make a perfect story .
but for a topic of such weight as combat in the second world war ( or the holocaust ) this technique backfires , for it creates coherent , comprehensible and redemptive narratives out of events whose size , complexity and evil are utterly beyond the reach of human ken .
in this way spielberg trivializes the awesome evil of the stories he films .
_ saving private ryan _ tells the story of eight men who have been detailed on a " pr mission " to pull a young man , ryan ( whose three other brothers were just killed in fighting elsewhere ) out of combat on the normandy front just after d - day .
ryan is a paratrooper who dropped behind enemy lines the night before the landings and became separated from his fellow soldiers .
the search for him takes the eight soldiers across the hellish terrain of world war ii combat in france .
there 's no denying spielberg came within shouting distance of making a great war movie .
the equipment , uniforms and weapons are superbly done .
the opening sequence , in which captain miller ( tom hanks ) leads his men onto omaha beach , is quite possibly the closest anyone has come to actually capturing the unendurably savage intensity of modern infantry combat .
another pleasing aspect of the film is spielberg 's brave depiction of scenes largely unknown to american audiences , such as the shooting of prisoners by allied soldiers , the banality of death in combat , the routine foul - ups in the execution of the war , and the cynicism of the troops .
the technical side of the film is peerless , as always .
the camera work is magnificent , the pacing perfect , the sets convincing , the directing without flaw .
hanks will no doubt be nominated for an oscar for his performance , which was utterly convincing , and the supporting cast was excellent , though ted danson seems a mite out of place as a paratroop colonel .
yet the attempt at a realistic depiction of combat falls flat on its face because realism is not something which can be represented by single instances or events .
it has to thoroughly permeate the context at every level of the film , or the story fails to convince .
throughout the movie spielberg repeatedly showed only single examples of the grotesque wounds produced by modern mechanized devices ( exception : men are shown burning to death with relative frequency ) .
for example , we see only one man with guts spilled out on the ground .
here and there men lose limbs ; in one scene miller is pulling a man to safety , there 's an explosion , and miller looks back to see he is only pulling half a man .
but the rest of the corpses are remarkably intact .
there are no shoes with only feet in them , no limbs scattered everywhere , no torsos without limbs , no charred corpses , and most importantly , all corpses have heads ( in fairness there are a smattering of wicked head wounds ) .
the relentless dehumanization of the war , in which even corpses failed to retain any indentity , is soft - pedaled in the film .
ultimately , _ saving private ryan _ bows to both hollywood convention and the unwritten rules of wartime photography in its portrayal of wounds and death in war .
rather than saying _ saving private ryan _ is " realistic , " it would be better to describe it as " having realistic moments .
" another aspect of the " hollywoodization " of the war is the lack of realistic dialogue and in particular , the lack of swearing .
anyone familiar with the literature on the behavior of the men during the war , such as fussell 's superb _ wartime : understanding and behavior in the second world war _ ( which has an extensive discussion on swearing ) , knows that the troops swore fluently and without letup .
" who is this private ryan that we have to die for him ?
" asks one infantrymen in the group of eight . rendered in wartime demotic , that should have been expressed as " who is this little pecker that we have to get our dicks shot off for him ?
"
or some variant thereof .
conversations should have been literally sprinkled with the " f " word , and largely about ( the search for ) food and sex .
this is all the more inexplicable because the movie already had an " r " rating due to violence , so swearing could not possibly have been eliminated to make it a family film . however ,
the most troubling aspect of the film is the spielbergization of the topic .
the most intense hell humans have ever created for themselves is not emotionally wrenching enough for steven spielberg .
he can not just cede control to the material ; he has to be bigger than it .
as if afraid to let the viewer find their own ( perhaps unsettled and not entirely clear ) emotional foothold in the material , spielberg has to package it in hallmark moments to give the war a meaning and coherence it never had : the opening and closing scenes of ryan and his family in the war cemetary ( reminscent of the closing scene from _ schindler 's list ) , the saccharine exchange between ryan and his wife at the close ( every bit as bad as schindler 's monologue about how his car , tiepin or ring could have saved another jew ) , quotes from abraham lincoln and emerson , captain miller 's last words to private ryan , and an unbelievable storyline in which a prisoner whom they free earlier in the movie comes back to kill the captain .
that particular subplot is so hokey , so predictable , it nigh on ruins the film .
nowhere in the film is there a resolute depiction of the meaninglessness , stupidity and waste which characterized the experience of war to the men who actually fought in combat ( imagine if miller had been killed by friendly fire or collateral damage ) .
because of its failure to mine deeply into the terrible realities of world war ii , _ saving private ryan _ can only pan for small truths in the shallows . .
N

i wish more films would take on issues of faith and morality in the modern world .
and i wish that film - makers would use commandments as a blueprint on how _ not _ to do it .
writer / director daniel taplitz has created a bizarre conglomeration of satire and soul - searching in this tale of seth warner ( aidan quinn ) , a man of faith who runs into a streak of bad luck which usually inspires country - western lyrics : his pregnant wife drowns , his home is destroyed by a tornado , he loses his job and his dog is crippled by a bolt of lightning .
convinced that god has broken his half of the covenant , seth decides to break his , and sets out to turn every " thou shalt not " of the ten commandments into a " thou shalt " ( and vice versa ) .
his wife 's sister rachel ( " friends " ' courteney cox ) wants to help seth ; rachel 's selfish husband harry ( anthony lapaglia ) , who tends to break a few commandments of his own , thinks seth is a lunatic .
thus begins a film which picks the wrong tone for every occasion .
taplitz is n't interested in treating seth 's tragedies as genuinely tragic , making it impossible to sympathize with him .
composer joseph vitarelli provides a score full of whimsical woodwinds , turning seth 's sacrilegious mission into an amusing lark ; quinn 's performance as seth is all wild - eyed fervor without any genuine pain .
the actual breaking of the commandments is almost treated as an afterthought , with one through five dispatched in a five - minute montage .
the result is a character whose actions feel less like the authentic responses of an anguished man than the machinations of a high - concept movie plot .
it 's not even entirely clear that commandments is about seth .
corporate attorney rachel is given a case which is supposed to soften a hard heart we see no indication she has , while harry gets his comeuppance as part of seth 's " false witness .
"
only courteney cox strikes a note of reality in a solid performance ; she is sane center around which too equally troubled men revolve .
even she ca n't force taplitz to decide whose story this is , or what we should have learned about dealing with the struggles in our lives and our relationship with the infinite .
by the time seth makes a singularly biblical reappearance late in the film , it has become clear that taplitz is aiming for a fantastical fable which makes no connection with real human experience .
commandments is a bad comedy which could have been a decent drama if daniel taplitz had had the guts to take faith -- and the loss thereof -- at all seriously .
N

moviemaking is a lot like being the general manager of an nfl team in the post - salary cap era -- you 've got to know how to allocate your resources .
every dollar spent on a free - agent defensive tackle is one less dollar than you can spend on linebackers or safeties or centers .
in the nfl , this leads to teams like the detroit lions , who boast a superstar running back with a huge contract , but can only field five guys named herb to block for him .
in the movies , you end up with films like " spawn " , with a huge special - effects budget but not enough money to hire any recognizable actors .
jackie chan is the barry sanders of moviemaking .
he spins and darts across the screen like sanders cutting back through the defensive line .
watching jackie in operation condor as he drives his motorcycle through the crowded streets of madrid , fleeing an armada of pursuers in identical black compact cars , is reminiscent of sanders running for daylight with the chicago bears in hot pursuit , except that sanders does n't have to worry about rescuing runaway baby carriages .
but like the lions star , jackie does n't have anybody to block for him .
almost every cent that 's invested in a jackie chan movie goes for stunts , and as chan does his own stunts , the rest of the money goes to pay his hospital bills .
this leaves about 75 cents to pay for things like directors ( chan directs ) , scripts and dubbing and supporting characters , not to mention the hideous title sequence .
this also explains why the movie was shot in odd places like morocco and spain .
( chan 's first release in this country , " rumble in the bronx " , was supposedly set in new york , but was filmed in vancouver , and in the chase scenes the canadian rockies are clearly visible . )
heck , jackie does n't even have enough money for a haircut , looks like , much less a personal hairstylist .
in condor , chan plays the same character he 's always played , himself ,
a mixture of bruce lee and tim allen , a master of both kung - fu and slapstick - fu .
jackie is sent by the un to retrieve a cache of lost nazi gold in the north african desert , and is chased by a horde of neo - nazi sympathizers and two stereotypical arabs ( one of the things i like about jackie chan movies : no political correctness ) .
he is joined by three women , who have little to do except scream , " jackie , save us ! " , and misuse firearms .
the villain is an old nazi whose legs were broken in the secret base so that he has to be carried everywhere , and he 's more pathetic than evil .
en route , we have an extended motorcycle chase scene , a hilarious fight in the moroccan version of motel 6 with the neo - nazis , and two confrontations with savage natives .
once at the secret desert base , there is a long chop - socky sequence , followed by the film 's centerpiece , a wind - tunnel fight that 's even better than the one in face / off .
this is where the money was spent , on well - choreographed kung - fu sequences , on giant kevlar hamster balls , on smashed - up crates of bananas , and on scorpions .
ignore the gaping holes in the plot ( how , exactly , if the villain 's legs were broken , did he escape from the secret nazi base , and why did n't he take the key with him ? ) .
do n't worry about the production values , or what , exactly , the japanese girl was doing hitchhiking across the sahara .
just go see the movie .
operation condor has pretentions of being a " raiders of the lost ark " knockoff , but one wonders what jackie could do with the raiders franchise blocking for him -- with a lawrence kazdan screenplay , a john williams score , spielberg directing and george lucas producing , condor might be an a+ movie .
however , you 've got to go with what you 've got , and what you 've got in jackie chan is something special -- a talent that mainstream hollywood should , could , and ought to utilize .

P