SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)
Rating: 4 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Robert Rodat
Starring: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Jeremy Davies, Matt Damon
Ingredients: Philosophy, World War II, humans trapped in carnage, rescue mission, cowering, crying, killing
Synopsis: At the bottom of Nature's food chain, population in prey animals is kept in check by predators. But among the top creatures there are no higher predators. Often the top creatures themselves - - whether they be lions or wolves or primitive humans - - keep their numbers low mainly through vicious regionalism and territorial resource competition, using crude weapons such as teeth and claws, or spears and arrows. The setting of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is World War II, an era in history when Germany's (and Japan's) "Manifest Destiny" included resource expansion and racial exclusion on an immense scale involving advanced 20th century weaponry and populations of millions, resulting in continuous, gruesome carnage and psychological denial.
Among the countries resisting Germany and Japan was the United States, at that time an economic heavyweight and regional power, but militarily inadequate compared to the great powers. For example, Japan had the world's most powerful and technologically advanced navy at the time of Pearl Harbor. As a result of the United States' relative inexperience, a situation occurred where ordinary American men such as kindly schoolteachers and terrified, fresh-faced kids (today some would be below the legal drinking age) found themselves responsible for penetrating hostile territory to battle killing machines in an attempt to stem the tide of Nazi expansion. Many combatants made the ultimate sacrifice, dying like flies in a hailstorm.
In SAVING PRIVATE RYAN Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) is not a professional soldier; he is more likely to read Emerson than to pack a machine gun. But because it is wartime, Miller and a small squad of men are unfortunately given an unwise suicidal mission behind enemy lines to locate a lost but relatively unimportant soldier named Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) and return Ryan to safety. Although the men question and resist their mission, they eventually decide it is the only way they'll ever be allowed to return home from the War, and so they courageously do their duty. Finding and rescuing Ryan becomes a kind of Holy Grail, symbolizing the desire of every man to protect innocent, ordinary life from the brutality of war, even if the heroes themselves risk being consumed, body and personality, by warfare.
Opinion: You can always tell a four-star movie because when the audience comes out of the theater after seeing it, they look a little dazed, as if in their minds some part of the movie is still playing. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is one such movie.
Most of us live pleasant lives of convenience, unmindful of gritty, value-laden, life -and-death decisions that others have to make. We go down to the grocery store refrigerator and select meat for our consumption, our minds far removed from the physical act of having to butcher the food ourselves. From plush, comfortable couches some of us can push buttons that enable long range bombs to fly far away, and go down the chimney to incinerate a cartoonish villain, or demolish an electrical power plant in a rogue state. Or we may clap our hands when we see it on TV. Like watching a video game.
But the exact same executions would have an entirely different effect on us if we had to do them face to face. For example, what if we had to stab and kill thirteen-year-old enemy soldiers ourselves instead of by push-button? What if we had to live in the same building with civilian families dying from lack of water, and eating rotten, non-refrigerated, food as a result of the local electrical power plant being bombed? Or suppose we were responsible for deciding from among our friends and family, which member must die in a hail of gunfire in order to take out an enemy station. In that case things wouldn't be so easy. Life would take on a gritty texture. We'd be forced to clarify our values, who we are, and what we stand for.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN explores this idea. Ordinary men are sent into a situation of utter carnage - - not to swagger and easily save the universe as per usual summer blockbuster - - but so that the film may allow us to vicariously examine how Joe Everyman might feel in a FUBAR situation such as the war our grandfathers faced half a century ago, a war which we may yet fight again, if vigilance falters and human inattention allows history to repeat itself.
Behind the scenes, somebody, somewhere is responsible for slaughtering the food animal; somebody does engage the enemy; somebody does make courageous, forgotten sacrifices in defense and nurturance of the common good. The "dirty work" happens in history and every day behind the sanitized curtains of our convenience in order to make possible our pampered and privileged lifestyles. Accustomed to free entertainment, facilities, and civil liberties, we only rarely ponder - - as the characters do in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN - - the politically incorrect and often disturbing concept of sacrifice.
While watching the movie inside the theater I noticed a father consoling a teenage boy who had covered his face with his shirt because he could not stomach the frightening, gut-wrenching visual detail of the war scenes (bleached colors and on-foot camerawork along with periods of deafness and slow motion make the audience feel as if it is partaking in the mayhem). It is a tribute to Spielberg, his cast, and crew that SAVING PRIVATE RYAN successfully captures the realism and emotion of war.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is a classic that is easily as good if not better than the best previous movies of Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg.
Reviewed July 25, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga This review and others like it can be found at THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com
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