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I was initially slightly reticent about the 163min running time of Saving Private Ryan, and this was not allayed by the opening five minutes of the film. However, I needn't have worried: This is a genuinely great film. Wonderfully executed, shot with an evident abundance of care and attention, with absolutely first-rate attention to detail.Spielberg takes an excellent story, full of action, heroics, humanity and moral dilemma, and makes it come alive in a way that only a talented veteran of the silver screen possibly could. (Did this same man *really* direct War of the Worlds? Or did he just pay his plumber to do it for him while he went to the pub?)
Interesting to note is that this film is not some tragic relaying of someone's personal triumph and tragedy, and not purportedly based on true events. So feel free to laugh, guilt-free, at the entertaining ways in which some of the soldiers are killed, and marvel at the Boy's Own comic-book style of WW2 derring-do displayed herein. That said, it loses one star for the unabashed schmaltz of the opening five and closing five minutes, (Surely Spielberg can come up with a less cheesy way of conveying the same thing?) as well as almost managing to get through the entire movie without a single That-Wouldn't-Happen moment, until fifteen minutes before the end, when, unfortunately, a few start to appear. Still none of this actually ruins the film, and it's well worth watching. Don't be put off by the length as the time just zips by. And finally, Saving Private Ryan quietly holds what is perhaps the pinnacle of Spielberg's directing career, and something which I thought impossible: Somehow, he manages to extract a genuinely great performance from the otherwise dire Vin Diesel. Amazing. |
