Saving Private Ryan

Steven Spielberg has been wildly successful and wildly inconsistent this decade. He seems to wear two hats when taking on projects. One as a director for hire (the two Jurassic Park movies, Lost World in particular), the other as an auteur (Schindler's List). Saving Private Ryan falls under the latter category, but it's more than that. It's dark, brutal, unflinching, horrifying, and one of the best movies he's done in a long time, maybe ever.

The movie opens on D-Day, with the Allied Forces hitting Omaha Beach. When the boat containing Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks at his best) hits the shore, you wonder how any of these men survived this battle. The second they hit the ground, Nazi gun fire has wasted half their company. And it gets worse. It's cold, it's grey, there's nowhere to hide, the Nazis are firing bullets that are a good three inches long and can take a limb off easily, and yet somehow, by sheer force of will, the Americans take the beach, but not before suffering huge casualties. And nothing is spared from the audience. And I mean nothing.

After the Allied Forces take the beach, Capt. Miller and crew get a new assignment, straight from the Chief of Staff. The Ryan family sent four of their boys to fight in the War, and they were about to get telegrams stating that three of them were killed in action. The government, in an attempt to put a positive spin on it, give the remaining Ryan, a Private with the Airborne 101, a Get Out of War Free card, and Miller's troops get the same if they go find him and bring him back. The problem is, he dropped way behind enemy lines, and no one seems to know where he is, much less if he's still alive.

You all probably know which actor is playing the part of Private Ryan. If you do know, try to forget it. If you don't, good. The moment where they think they've found him, only to find it's the wrong Private Ryan, was somewhat anticlimactic since I knew by looking at the guy that he wasn't the one. But that's a small gripe, and in no way minimizes this movie's impact.

Here's another absurdly early Oscar prediction: This movie wins best sound.   Bullets were whizzing past my head. I very nearly ducked on a couple of occasions. Spielberg did a lot of lengthy camera shots as well, which I thought was very effective in terms of helping the audience see only what the soldiers saw. If a Nazi was barreling down on a guy, you didn't see it until they did, which was usually too late to do anything about it. Bullets that took soldier's heads off were random. No time was spent setting up the mean, evil Nazi heartlessly killing the poor, innocent Midwestern farm boy. This movie handled it in terms of, Farm Boy's alive, Farm Boy's dead. A smart move. Either neither side was glorified or demonized, or both were, I'm not sure which, but you will certainly walk away with a sense of awe and respect for what those troopers when through and survived. 

Spielberg also did a smart thing with showing our troops doing some pretty nasty things to the enemy, something that's usually only done by the bad guys in a war movie. There is a Mexican standoff that makes the standoff in True Romance look like kids with water pistols. And the end result is, while merciless, also very real. War is indeed hell. Anyone who says this movie glorifies war simply hasn't seen the movie.

Saving Private Ryan wasn't shot with the same blazing color that Platoon had.  It was more of a wash of grey, black and white, like an old photograph from the time period. The performances were stellar across the board. Tom Sizemore gets the role of his career as second in command under Hanks, and runs with it. Edward Burns (who I think is far better looking than Matt Damon, but I digress) plays bitter well, and he showed particular scorn for this mission and everything it stands for. I also liked the bit parts by Dennis Farina and Ted Danson as fellow commanders of Capt. Miller. The performance you're going to remember, though, is Jeremy Davies (Spanking the Monkey, Twister) as a corporal who serves as their language interpreter. He hasn't fired a gun since basic training, and is ill prepared for the horrors that await him. He, in a way, is us, the general public for whom these soldiers fought. He's not yet hardened by the brutality of war, and he's not prepared to shoot someone simply for being on the other team. I felt his pain more than anyone's.