I felt like I finally “got” this movie on this viewing, which could be my tenth or twentieth (even though I’ve never exactly loved it, I’ve always enjoyed testing my various entertainment systems with its glorious sound mix) to date. Whether it’s because enough time has passed for me to have some perspective, or just that I’ve grown to a point that I can appreciate what it’s doing, or just a simple mood thing, for once I enjoyed it as much as Spielberg’s other works.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few scenes that continue to annoy me. The problem I have with this movie is two-fold: script and cast. The actual filmmaking takes my breath away, making me realise like a punch to the gut that even if I ever do get off my butt and make my own movies, I’m never going to win any Oscars, or, at least, I’ll never deserve to. Spielberg puts together some stunning sequences here, most obviously the opening scenes of battle. Had the script matched this quality and the cast been slightly less, I don’t know, annoying, I could have loved this movie from the get-go.

Even after all these viewings, I can’t take my eyes off the opening. There’s a real sense of, “What the bleep is happening here?” and when Tom Hanks arrives on the beach and the whole scene slows down, the sound drowns out, you’re placed for a moment precisely in his shoes. It’s a stunning, almost frightening, example of how powerful a connection cinema can make with an audience.

But then the movie settles into this strange story with chatty soldiers trekking across the countryside, getting in adventures. Dad’s Army, or something, with Young Americans. Really bad attempts to add humour to the whole affair, the running “joke” of “FUBAR”, Matt Damon’s story about his brother’s girlfriend or something (“Talk about someone who fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down…” hmm, never heard that one before…) The only humour in this movie that works for me, and it’s because it springs out of the human drama, is the little French girl when she smacks her father across the face for trying to send her off with the Americans.

I know, these are just personal objections. It’s not even like I always hate the actors here. Damon was great in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Sizemore in just about anything, Ed Burns in 15 Minutes, Ribisi in Boiler Room, etc, etc… It could be that I don’t like these “ensemble cast” things. Maybe that’s another reason I continue to love The Thin Red Line, the other 1998 war movie, so much more than Saving Private Ryan. There, the actors were not only overall better (in my eyes) than here, but they were playing lone individuals with personal stories and struggles, not a team as here.

Saving Private Ryan will never truly stand out to me as a great movie. All concerned, in all departments, have done far, far better work. But at least now I feel like I “get” it a little more, and I certainly wouldn’t object to watching it a few more times in the future.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005 at 8:44 am in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.