Five years before making Saving Private Ryan, director Steven Spielberg crafted what is quite possibly the most haunting and powerful film ever made about the Jewish Holocaust with Schindler's List. Saving Private Ryan is in many ways a bookend to Schindler's List. Schindler's List is in elegant black-and-white; Saving Private Ryan is in stark, bold color. Schindler deals with the German side of World War II, and Ryan deals with the American side, and in glorious, intense fashion. Spielberg pulls no punches in showing us how brutally horrific war really is.

Spielberg's film follows a group of American soldiers led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) who, shortly after the D-Day invasion of Normandy Beach, are sent on a public relations stunt to find and bring home a Private James Frances Ryan from Iowa (Matt Damon) whose three brothers have all been killed in battle, and whose mother is understandably wracked with grief. Not all of Miller's men are extremely happy about this, especially outspoken Private Reiben (Edward Burns) and tough Private Caparzo (Vin Diesel).

As the men trek through Europe to find this Ryan, even Miller himself and his right-hand man, Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore) begin to question what exactly it is that they're doing out there. So what if Ryan has dead brothers? Some of the men reason that they too have brothers. Another brings up the fact that Ryan's poor mother must be overwhelmed, but they also reason that, hey, they have mothers too, and they're not getting a one-way ticket home from the horrors of the war. What has this Ryan done, other than being a cheap P.R. device, that allows him to deserve this?

The subject of the film allows for a dissection of the comradery and brotherhood that the soldiers have for one another. Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies), a young, inexperienced soldier just there because Miller's two German translators were killed in the D-Day assault, is even trying to write a book about it. The things he discovers and witnesses, as well as the brutalities of war that he comes face-to-face with, give his character the chance to radically change. By the end of the movie, he has learned to own up to his fears and has consequently become a different man. He will never again be the same person he was before accompanying Miller and his men, such is the way in which the war has forever altered him.

Steven Spielberg has put to film some of the absolute best war scenes ever made. Saving Private Ryan opens with the aforementioned spectacular D-Day invasion. It lasts a little over half-an-hour and feels like a film unto itself. Some may criticize it for being superfluous, but it is anything but. It is a riveting, astonishing, and graphic visual tour de force that allows Spielberg to do some of the best directing in his career; it even matches some of the material in Schindler's List. It's unlike any war film you've ever seen: It doesn't skimp on any of the bloody details like populist fantasies might, and it doesn't turn the battles into highly-stylized video game sequences, like, say, John Woo's Windtalkers. Soldiers who have just lost their arms stagger around trying to find them, and one minute you'll be talking to someone while the next their face will be caved in. Death is treated in such a natural, offhand manner that it's terribly sad while at the same time even morbidly humorous. Saving Private Ryan is a gutsy, unflinchingly realistic look at the terror of World War II, and it'll suck you in from frame one.

Spielberg should also be commended for wrangling a huge cast of talented actors for the film. Though they are mostly all familiar faces, their characters grow and change throughout the film, enough so to separate the actors' characters from their personalities. Tom Hanks is superb as the worn-out captain who finds his hand suddenly shaking randomly and uncontrollably at any time of the day, and Tom Sizemore does well as loyal Sergeant Horvath. Of particular mention are also Jeremy Davies as the amateur corporal, who makes Upham into such a likable character that his sudden changes near the end manage to shock; Vin Diesel in a winning role as Caparzo before he hit it big and became everyone's favorite bald, ridiculously muscled action hero; and Matt Damon, perfectly portraying a fiercely loyal, young, and naive soldier in the title's Private Ryan.

There are also several surprising cameos, most notably from Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti, and Dennis Farina, all doing excellent jobs, no matter how brief their appearances may be. They each leave their own impact on the film, and it's all the better for it.

As Saving Private Ryan closes, one feels remarkably touched and moved by another of Spielberg's startling visions, and filled with a sense of pride and patriotism that I thought was impossible in this cynical day and age.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age