As Reviewed by James BrundageAs Reviewed by James Brundage
At the time I am writing this, I have seen Saving Private Ryan three times. Each time, I have resolved myself to write a review on it, but was not able to do so. To sum up the greatness of this film would be like writing a letter to the mother of a dead soldier. No words I can say can express the tragedy inherant in the film. I could batter you with cliché after cliché, trite phrase after trite phrase, but what would that accomplish? "Best film of the year", "finest war movie ever made", and "an incredible experience" are truths, but they do not tell the story.
Saving Private Ryan is a film about the agony of war. It is not told, as most war films are, from a third-person, as the eye that sees but does not care, but as a first-person (though I cannot reveal who), showing what happenned in World War II. The one cliché I will give that actually does do the movie justice, and hear me out, is that it is the most violent movie of all time.
Why does this do Saving Private Ryan justice? Because that is war. War is when you have a man searching for his arm on Normandy while the world goes to hell around him. War is innocent soldiers screaming for their mothers with their guts hanging out, their final words being unintelligable because of the pain. War is brutal. Saving Private Ryan IS war.
The basic plot is this: a squad of eight men is sent to retrieve one, a boy who has lost his three brothers on the field of battle and now is lost himself somewhere behind enemy lines. The eight men, Army Rangers, are war-hardened individuals, but still strikingly human. Each character, from the victims who are shot down in the first second of the invasion of Normandy (which a re-enactment of occupies the first half hour of the film), to Capt. Henry Miller (Tom Hanks) to Private James Ryan himself, are beautifully developed, and perfect illustrations of the effects of war upon man.
This is the justice I offer: The first time I watched it, I saw an old man walking out. Upon asking him why he was walking out, seeing him in the lobby, he informed me this: he had been at Normandy.
Movie Reviews by James Brundage