Saving Private Ryan, ghastly?

[CliffnDallas]

Saving Private Ryan was an excellent motion picture. I have the feeling most profesional critics would have enjoyed it. If it had been titled...Saving Ryans Privates instead.

 

[burmafrd]

I have talked to veterans who landed at Omaha Beach in the first 2 waves. Everyone who saw SPR agreed that it came closer to showing what it was like then anything they have ever seen. Personally I think the first 29 minutes of that movie should be required viewing in every High School senior history class in the nation. I do agree the rest of the movie was frankly not all that great.

 

[Phrozen Phil]

I'm going to step out there and open myself up to getting flamed.......but I think Speilberg is a over rated.

I took a Steven Speilberg class in college, and I learned alot about him, his movies are all basically the same, anti hero type.

I never thought Private Ryan was all that good anyway. I know I'm in the minority on this, but its just how I see it.

Other than Schindlers List, which I thought was one of the finest movies ever made in the history of film, I can't say I enjoy most of Speilbergs work at all.

Flame away.

I would never flame you, because I have too much respect for you.

What I think many struggle with is the notion that movies about this subject need to be more factual. Make no mistake, this movie was a fictional story in an historic setting. My father (who was a veteran) told me that he felt that he didn't think what happened in the movie would likely happen in real life. When I asked him about the combat scenes, he was more forgiving, stating that combat can be far more horrible than anything we can depict on film. He felt that Spielberg and Hanks (who co-produced) wanted to provide the kind of perspective that had not been depicted before. I think he succeeded in that goal.
When you compare SPR to Band of Brothers, you are talking about the same creative individuals who were dealing with a book based on real people with real experiences. What made it very real were the sequences with the real veterans describing in gut-wrenching detail the horror of the aftrmath of battle. The episode that stuck with me from that series was the one from the perspective of Easy Company's medic. That episode will always rank as one of the most moving of that series. We should aslo keep in mind that B of B was a series, telling a lot of stories. SPR was trying to tell one story, and in my mind, did a compelling job. Was it great history? I don't know. I do know that it was a compelling movie.

 

[BigStar]

I didnt see Schindler's List when it first came out so I was definately disappointed. Schindler just exploited free labor and even killed Jews who weren't working hard enough. I thought he was better than that but little did I know. It was great that he saved a couple hundred but he was just exploiting free labor. They could have called it "Schindler's Slaves" esp the way he picked the healthy exclusively, I was repulsed.