Saving Private Ryan 1998
Well, I finally went to see Saving Private Ryan which is now at the cheapo theaters. I think this movie suffered a lot from too much hype. I went in expecting something really outstanding, but this was more like a lite version of any number of really good Vietnam movies.
The plot was pretty much silly. Why couldn’t they have called around on their radios and found Ryan that way?
I liked the characters (in general) and Tom Hanks was very solid as always. One problem I had though is I think Spielberg wanted to do a big war movie and a character study at the same time and he achieves neither as well as he could have if he had ignored the other. More about this in a spoiler below.
Nonetheless Spielberg has done a solid piece of work here. The battle scenes were done very well and probably captured the confusion and hopelessness of being a soldier on D-day as well as has ever been done. Even the battle of the bridge was done very well technically. The few (too few) moments where characters were allowed to develop were also good (about the middle hour), but they weren’t enough to set this movie very far apart from so many other similar movies. I don’t think Spielberg broke any new ground, he just used modern effects and a budget that only he could muster to do what has been done in the past, only a little bit better.
Can’t give it more than a B.
Owned on: Digital