fludd.org - Movie Review

Nowadays, it's quite hard to make a war movie, since most tricks have been used. Even if Saving Private Ryan does follow the tradition of war movies, it is nonetheless an excellent movie that could be watched over and over again for different reasons. The movie has the potential to satisfy the action scenes lovers, the sternest movie critics and those who are very curious about the Second World War.

Following the tradition of war movies, director Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park) doesn't certainly bring anything new to the genre, but hopefully, Saving Private Ryan, despite the small lack of originality, is not only an outstanding war movie, but it is miles further from its counterparts because of the gruesome realism that most of us would like to see in order to have the feeling that we are in the real war that nobody wants to forget. The movie is most known for its first 30 minutes, which is perhaps the most brutal dramatization of warfare in movie history. During those 30 minutes, Miller and countless boatloads of scared soldiers are shuffled onto the Normandy beach while the Germans, entrenched on top of hills, fire down volleys of machinegun at them, picking them off like ducks in a pond. Director Steven Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski immediately goes into handheld camera mode and takes us from the boat to the beach and finally over the beach, and through it all we feel like we're entering hell itself. The fear of the men, of even the veteran Miller, comes through in quick snippets, all centering on Miller as he struggles through his own fears to lead his men to salvation. By the time it is over, you feel as if you've lived through it all, and not simply watched it.

Speaking about the acting, the movie is full of actors who were considered as perfect strangers, back then. Vin Diesel plays a private with a heart, Barry Pepper shows up as a sniper who quotes a passage from the Bible before each kill and and Giovanni Ribisi as a medic who cares too much. The cast seems to be held together by Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) who offers a solid performance, as Captain John Miller, a former school teacher who finds, with great disgust, that he excels in warfare and the always ready Tom Sizemore (Black Hawk Down), as Horvath, Miller's assistant, seems to be the man of the situation for playing in war movies, since he is very used to hold these kind of roles.

Finally, I regard Saving Private Ryan as one the best movies about the Second World War. Even if it's not as beautiful and complex as Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, it is, nonetheless, a very brutal, shocking and realistic movie that will stay in our mind forever.

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