Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American epic war film as Commander John Miller takes his men behind foe lines to rescue Private James Ryan, whose three siblings have been murdered in battle.
If Steven Spielberg's emotional intelligence matched his visual genius, his harrowing, passionately felt and honorably flawed new film might qualify for one of the greatest American movies ever made about World War II.
This is Spielberg's way of showing that these warriors were ordinary men -- men who, if they survived, became the grandfathers and great-grandfathers who, these days, pass largely unnoticed through life.
Steven Spielberg's film is not perfect: it plays its strongest card first, the middle section is slightly uneven, and there are sallies into sentimentality. But it is a modern war classic.
The film is directed by Steven Spielberg, and breaks new ground in content and style. It merges some of the most realistically disturbing battle footage ever included in a feature film with a touching human story.
Calling it the greatest war movie ever made does a disservice to other, equally worthwhile, lower-profile films. But it's still an excellent movie, as effective in battle scenes as it is in that of soldiers ruminating on an Edith Piaf song.
The result, I am sorry to say, is that Saving Private Ryan seems almost banal in its achievement, a film that sacrifices humanity for technical wizardry.
[Saving Private Ryan] accomplishes something I had been taught was most difficult -- making an action-filled anti-war film or, at least, one that doesn't in some way glorify or lie about combat.
