Saving Private Ryan (1998)
A Review by Christian Pyle
"Saving Private Ryan" will certainly be remembered among the best war movies ever made. It does what a great war movie should-it looks realistically at war and examines war intelligently. The plot is deliberately insane: eight men are sent into enemy territory to rescue one solider, Private Ryan (Matt Damon). Ryan is the last surviving son in his family; his three brothers have all died in action recently. Gen. George Marshall (Harve Presnell) is moved by the plight of Mrs. Ryan, who will learn about the three deaths on the same day, and orders that the last Ryan be returned safely home. The hitch is that Ryan parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, and the Army has no way to know if he is alive or to bring him out except to send a team in after him. So, Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks) and his squad of Rangers, who have just survived the bloody battle of Omaha Beach, are ordered to risk their lives to bring Ryan back.
Naturally, the eight soldiers on the rescue team must examine why Ryan's life is valued over their own. Ryan serves as much as a symbol as a character; he comes to represent all the people that soldiers sacrifice their lives for. The plot allows "Saving Private Ryan" to explore the complex emotions the soldiers feel about being asked to lay down their lives and those of their buddies for a stranger.
In addition to this theme of sacrifice, "Saving Private Ryan" examines the effects of war. These eight men are not professional soldiers; they are everyday guys from a variety of backgrounds who have been plucked out of their civilian lives. The men have a pool going about what their captain did for a living before the war. When he finally tells them, Miller comments that back home people quickly guess his occupation and wonders if he has been changed by the war, so changed that his wife won't recognize him. Miller justifies the mission as a purification, declaring, "If [saving Ryan] earns me the right to get back to my wife, well then that's my mission."
The performances are excellent, and the characters are varied and interesting. (This is a major difference between "Private Ryan" and its rival WWII epic "The Thin Red Line," where the characters tend to be indistinct and to blur into each other). The rescue team includes a seasoned sergeant with a collection of dirt from all the places he's fought (Tom Sizemore), a grumbling malcontent (Edward Burns), a sharpshooter who prays before firing (Barry Pepper), a Jewish soldier who enjoys showing his Star of David to captured Nazis (Adam Goldberg), a sensitive medic (Giovanni Ribisi), and a naïve translator who's never been in combat before (Jeremy Davies). Robert Rodat's screenplay is rich in detail and gives the fine cast a good deal to work with.
"Saving Private Ryan" also features the most harrowing war sequence ever committed to film. After a brief introductory frame, we are taken to Miller and crew on a boat headed for Omaha Beach. As soon as the gate drops, machine gun fire begins to tear men to ribbons. Some dive into the water, but bullets still slice into them indiscriminately. Many viewers may be offended by the violence, but it is doubtless a realistic depiction of the battle (as veterans have affirmed). This violence is also quite different than the glamous shoot-'em-ups we've seen so often in action films-the hundreds of soldiers who die in this brief scene never had a chance.
Despite its many strengths, "Saving Private Ryan" also has significant weaknesses in choices made by director Steven Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. Spielberg and Kaminski first collaborated on another movie about the era of WWII, "Schindler's List" (1993). What made "Schindler" such a powerful picture was the clash between Kaminski's stark black-and-white photography and Spielberg's tug-at-your-heartstrings style of epic storytelling-either style without the other would have failed. For "Private Ryan," Spielberg bleached out 60% of the color in post-production. While the black-and-white of "Schindler" served well to suggest the bleakness of the subject matter and to give a sense of the period (most 1940's movies were in b&w), the bleached look of "Private Ryan" seems stylized and that undercuts the movie's aspirations for realism. Another odd choice-Kaminski's camera often shakes. He probably went this way to give the audience a feeling of the chaos and confusion of battle, but the effect it has is to remove us from the scene and remind us of the camera. These strange decisions keep "Private Ryan" from being the masterpiece that "Schindler" was.
Grade: A-
© 1999 Christian L. Pyle <http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Christian+Pyle>
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