Saving Private Ryan (Widescreen)

First of all, many scenes of combat are totally unrealistic. I could produce a long list of inconsistencies, but I shall content myself with mentioning the obvious ones. The first 20 minutes are very well shot with hand-held cameras and represent the best part of the movie, but even then the shifting fortunes of the fight are conveyed showing only American losses at the beginning, then -- after the destruction of the main bunker -- only German ones. There usually was no hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. In one of the most ludicrous scenes, a wall crumbles and two groups of soldiers - one American and one German - caught in the act of planning strategy in adjacent rooms, look at each other and challenge the enemy to surrender for long seconds before somebody starts firing. This is science fiction, point.

The final battle in the town brings in the worst of the movie. No competent German commander would move two Tiger tanks straight in the town (where every window could hide a sniper armed with AT weapons), in violation of basic WWII tactics. After entering the town, the German squads usually advance in a single row, at minimal distance from each other and without providing suppression fire, allowing the Americans to mow them down. Spielberg even provides the viewer with a furious hand-to-hand fight with drawn blades between an American and a German soldier, rolling on the floor in a death embrace - he could supply them with swords, shields and maybe a few spells to cast at each other, and his effort of imagination would be complete. The ways the Tiger tanks are destroyed are also unrealistic.

If that were all, the movie would only be childish and unrealistic. But, typically, Spielberg has the vulgarity to convey a moral message (rather than encouraging the viewer to formulate his own answers). He purports to convey two kinds of
myths: a pacifist and an anti-nationalsocialist one. That he does in a most insipid way, reviving the standardized stereotype of the "plebeian hero", or, to express the same concept in different words, the "citizen soldier" celebrated by another popular historian and upholder of the religion of human rights & mass democracy, Stephen E. Ambrose.

The standard American tactic in France consisted in withdrawing their troops at the slightest sign of serious resistance, levelling the area with fighter-bombers and artillery, and then advancing on the rubbles. That would be a realistic portrayal of war on the Western Front, but, of course, it would hardly be a celebration of the virtues of the American crusaders, come "over there" to liberate their brethen from the chains of racism and
oppression. That's why the citizen soldiers - all ordinary people with no military traditions or special penchant for patriotism - suddenly discover extraordinary qualities of courage and willpower within their hearts, choosing to sacrifice their young lives in behalf of the Cause, and offering a (once more, totally unrealistic - in the real world fifty elite SS troopers armed with heavy equipment and supported by Tiger tanks would effortlessy wipe away Ryan's small detachment) long and hardened resistance, till the forces of Good - in the Happy End of standard Hollywood tradition - come and rescue the lone survivor.

I would like to compare this movie with Nazi or Communist (or -- Taleban!) propaganda - it's stupid, it's popular, it works in impressing moral feelings on the herd's minds. And has lots of expensive special effects and is commercially successful -- a typically American movie in true Spielberg fashion.

at first, i was kinda perplexe: why would the army send an unit to retrieve a single guy? i found it very illogical with what was happening. if it was the case, they would have done a lot of those kind of missions, which would have been even more illogical.

battle scenes do not have music score (which is what others should have done) and we see what we would have seen in real combat: horror of war. nothing clean or any platoon leader think he's the best like those '60s war movie.

it is also very americanized with the american flag at the beginning and at the end. it is a tribute to the american effort of the war but it also makes a small felling that lowers the effort of all the other allies: british, canadian, french resistance, chinese, australians and so on, because the flag makes you focus on USA (especially the amount of time your looking at the flag).