Saving Private Ryan

Critical Mark: 
Audience Mark: 
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The Basic Info

Directed by: Steven Spielberg (The Lst World: Jurassic Park 2)
Written by: Robert Rodat (Fly Away Home)
Starring: Tom Hanks (That Thing You Do!), Tom Sizemore (The Relic), Edward Burns (She's The One), Barry Pepper (Firestorm), Adam Goldberg (The Prophecy), Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi (Running With Scissors), Jeremy Davies (Going All the Way), Matt Damon (Good Will Huntingi)
Produced by: Ian Bryce,  Mark Gordon,  Gary Levinsohn, Steven Spielberg
 

The Basic Plot

A group of soldiers in World War II are given orders to find one man in the war who has lost all of his brothers, and pull him out, so that he can go home.

The Critical Review

    Saving Private Ryan is one of the most horrific and realistic war movies ever made, if not the most horrific. Brought to us by Steven Spielberg, it has three basic sequences combined into one film: Spielberg's vision of the landing at Normandy is first, followed by the search for Private Ryan, and ending in another climactic battle, this time in a ruined French town.

    Every film has things that are wrong with it and things that are right with it. It's not often though that a movie comes along where everything right about it is so right, and everything wrong with it is so wrong. Let's start with the good stuff. As usual with Spielberg, Ryan is a visually stunning world. Every minute detail, from the excruciating-to-watch opening sequence where troops get gunned down before even stepping off of their transport boats, to the way bullets zing even through the murky seawaters to kill their targets, to the recreation of a ruined French town, perfect down to the last pile of broken bricks.

    Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski does a masterful job here, wit not one single scene feeling false or unreal. The look, the light, the sound, everything works. Of course, the weapons, tanks etc are all amazing as well, as is the look of the troops. The bottom line is that Mr. Spielberg and company manage to pull us, the audience, into their world, and we come as close as we can to feeling the horrors of war without being a part of one.

    The acting is solid all around, with the group of soldiers ably being led by the superb Tom Hanks as Capt. Miller. The motley group of soldiers includes Tom Sizemore as Sgt. Horvath, Miller's faithful second in command and Edward Burns as Pvt. Reiben. They all manage to inhabit their roles with at least an average amount of skill, with the standout being Jeremy Davies as Cpl. Upham. His performance is deserving of a Supporting Actor nod at the Oscars.

    The problems with Ryan all come down to one thing: the script. It's awful. How Steven Spielberg could possibly have gone ahead and made this film with such a script is beyond me. Nothing makes sense and nothing that the characters say or do is a. realistic b. original or c. interesting.

    On the boring end is the bantor between the various characters during their search for Pvt. Ryan. The discussions about Cpt. Miller's past are dull and pointless and the one little speech Pvt. Ryan (Damon) is eventually given near the end is stupid. I read somewhere that the speech was totally improvised by Damon on the spot, and if true,  Spielberg shouldn't have indulged him.

    On the unoriginal end are the characters themselves. They are made up of a surprising number of stereotyped characters that you can find in any other war movie. The guy from the Bronx (Burns) is stubborn, loud and overly aggressive. Imagine that! How about a gentle guy from the Bronx? The second-in-command is loyal and defends his boss, there's the cowardly soldier who simply can't bring himself to kill, and the list goes on.

    Finally, there is the unrealistic side. The things that the characters do often makes no sense. You can ask yourself "What would I do in that situation?" and get a totally different answer than what the characters do. Pvt. Ryan finds out that every single one of his brothers has been killed in the war and that he has been given a ticket out, yet he refuses to leave. Why spend so much time in the beginning showing us how war is truly Hell, and then have someone right in the middle of it decide to stay? It ruins the whole point of the movie. The fact that Capt. Miller and co. are okay with this adds to the confusion and makes it more and more unreal. The kicker is the fact that the whole movie is an old man's flashback, and the old man turns out to be Private Ryan, who wasn't there for the first three quarters of the film, and thus could not possibly have the flashback.

    In the end, the script problems simply aren't enough to sink Ryan, and Steven Spielberg has yet another above average movie to add to his amazing collection.

The Audience Factor

    Audiences on average won't notice the plot/dialogue problems and will consider this they year's best film. The war re-enactments will stun every viewer, and if they have a relative who is in the military, will leave them having nightmares for nights to come. Sometimes problems with the plot aren't as important as the overall goal of a film, this being a good case. Even though some characters' actions seem contrary to the war-is-hell theme, every audience member will leave with the intended message anyway. Not for the weak-of-heart or stomach.