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Saving Private Ryan Customer Reviews (46 - 48 of 91 Reviews)

Good to go!
Except for a couple of minor errors (You don't walk across a field and talk loudly! Everyone takes off their badges of rank and stripes)This is pretty close to what some of my older relatives & friends have told me about the BIG ONE! A fitting tribute to the Guys who walked the walk and talked the talk.

Saving us from Spielberg
Spielberg may be our most infuriating director. Parts of this movie are just spectacular, from the super realism of the opening segments, landing on the Omaha beach, to some really precious intimate scenes during lulls in battle between the soldiers. Superb ensemble acting. I suspect the script writers got all that dead on right. But Spielberg is never satisfied to just give us a simple story well told etched in harsh reality. He has to add his layers of schmaltz and syrup, like that's the only way we can consume this stuff. It really drives me nuts. So we end up with this manipulative schmaltz throughout the movie, beginning with the John Willams score (will someone please shoot him and put us all out of our misery?) and continuing with the conceit upon which the plot is built. Give me a break. No general is going to send eight men--highly trained Rangers no less-- to their likely death to find one lousy guy. Sorry Mrs. Ryan. Then you have the cemetery scenes at beginning and end, and the Norman Rockwell shot of the Iowa farm house and the Norman Rockwell shot of the typists banging away letters of condolence and the flag waving in the breeze not once not twice but three times. This stuff is an affront to the real heroism otherwise portrayed. Puhleeze....I liked this movie and I absolutely hated this movie, or what Spielberg thought he had to do to it. No wonder Americans are becoming sniveling vapid sentimentalists who can't tell real from false.

A COMPARISON BETWEEN "RYAN" & "THE THIN RED LINE"
The Thin Red Line(TTRL):The opening scene is a soldier living and playing peacefully with native pacific islanders.
Saving Private Ryan(SPR): The opening scene is a huge American flag.

TTRL:The Japanese are humans like everybody else.
SPR: The Germans are ugly, filthy and evil.

TTRL: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and Woody Harrelson excel in their performances without needing to compete with each other.
SPR: Tom Hanks' "good kid" face doesn't fade from the screen for the entire movie.

TTRL: American soldiers can be cruel.
SPR: American soldiers can be cruel, but deep down they're good fellas.

TTRL: "This war is about property" (Sean Penn)
SPR: "Tell me I've led a good life" (an old-timer who was Matt Damon)

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