Yes, you’ve read correctly. I am going to bash this movie. I’ll begin by saying films of this genre better express the anti-war message by showing how combat experience inflicts serious psychological damage to a man’s mind. Saving Private Ryan, rather, expresses it by showing the extremely violent nature of warfare. Throughout the movie, we see men getting incinerated, we see men getting blown to pieces, we see it raining blood on Tom Hank’s shell-shocked face. Wow, after watching it, one must seriously feel for the WWII veterans. But where is the sense in watching it over and over and over again? (This movie seriously lacks rewatchability.)
The movie has a basic, but good story: Eight U.S. soldiers are set on a mission to find one soldier who has lost all of his brothers in the war. However, the movie’s scriptwriter could not have created less interesting characters. Tom Hanks, as Captain Miller, is extremely boring. He’s a teacher, he likes baseball, and he wants to go home – that’s essentially it. The other characters are the same way, only on top of their lack of personality, they’re either assholes or they’re whiners. Edwards Burns’s character (Riben, Rivan, something like that) he’s boring, an asshole, and a whiner. I was rooting for him to die. Ironically, he’s one of the few who lived. As for James Francis Ryan, the subject of the mission, he starts complaining as soon as he’s told he’s leaving the war and going home…showing no regard for his three dead brothers. Bottom line…the characters really sucked.
At this point, I hear voices asking me “So what? What about the battle scenes? Don’t you realize that all the horror, the massive bloodshed, the men getting blown to pieces…Don’t you realize that actually happened in World War Two?” No shit. I’m a history major. Of course I know that really happened. But that does not automatically mean it makes a film great. If you did not know that happened before you watched Saving Private Ryan, then you are naive. And if you didn’t know that happened in every other war since the beginning of mankind, then you are really, really, really naive. This movie was only the first to display it on film.
1998 was not a good year for movies, and many would say Saving Private Ryan should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. For a while I agreed because it is still a well-made film, and I don’t really dig Shakespeare in Love. However, I’ve come to realize that BASEketball beats the shit out of both of them.
What bothers me is that ever since Saving Private Ryan, almost every war film tries to be like it…and they all miserably fail. I watched roughly the first third of Flags of Our Fathers, before I stopped because it was so bad.
Some better films than Saving Private Ryan of this genre include:
Full Metal Jacket, Paths of Glory, Platoon, Band of Brothers (miniseries) The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now (probably the best one ever)
Movies where Tom Hanks plays a more interesting character:
Bachelor Party, The Money Pit, *Big, The ‘burbs, *A League of Their Own, *Philadelphia, *Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, *The Green Mile, Cast Away, *Catch Me If You Can, *Road to Perdition, The Terminal, and *Charlie Wilson’s War
*definitively a better movie than Saving Private Ryan
Better movies than Saving Private Ryan directed by Steven Spielberg:
Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark – which is hands down, his best, Poltergeist, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Amistad, Minority Report, and Catch Me If You Can.
Overrated/Underrated 