Saving Private Ryan better than boot camp

Saving Private Ryan

Steven Spielberg's latest bid for another Best Picture Oscar is about to hit the Apollo - and he may well get it. No test or paper can justify missing at least a cheap-night showing of Saving Private Ryan. This is the first in what is said to be a coming line of films about the second world war.

Saving Private Ryan focuses on a squad of Army Rangers. Their tale begins with gory footage of them storming the Omaha beach in Normandy and follows them on their search behind enemy lines. They are looking for a single paratrooper who, like every other paratrooper that survived the Normandy invasion, flew off course.

As it turns out, the US government had a policy that, for any given family, the draft would never take every male child. An error was made and Ryan (Matt Damon) and his three brothers were all drafted. But more significantly, Ryan's three brothers were all killed within one week of each other. Our heroes, the squad of Rangers, led by Tom Hanks as "the captain," must accept this rdiculous assignment of finding one man amidst the chaos of a world war.

The basis seems a little bogus (indeed nothing of the sort ever happened), there have been way too many movies about WWII, and Tom Hanks' severity is starting to get a little old, so what's all the noise? What highlights this movie as one of the most incredible war or action films is the cinematography. In fact, the opening scene alone, a graphic depiction of Normandy said to be a credit to those front-line photojournalists, is unbelievable.

There is no time taken to really process the violence. It just happens, in all its gruesome glory, or really lack thereof, right in front of you. The audience is transported to the full-fledged front-lines to flinch at every gun-shot and watch man after man be blown away, sparing nothing on the sheer gore. If there were any questions about it before, there are none remaining that war is, indeed, hell.

Saving Private Ryan is by far the most gruesome movie ever to come out of Hollywood, leaving even such titans as Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers, and Rambo far in the dust. As an added bonus, the characters are never used as sympathy, for indeed even the good guys are the bad guys in war. Rather the characters simply give a diverse perspective on the war-time issues of duty, command, patriotism, survival, camaraderie, and altruism. Bravo to Spielberg. Way to make up for Amistad's flop.

-Dan Roisman