# Saving Private Ryan (1998)

### reviewed by
Frederick Weber

I have read some and printed out all the reviews listed here. I am not a movie critic. I do not have the eloquence that most of you have. Hell, the 14 year old reviewer writes a lot better than I do. So please excuse my ignorance, any mispelling that I do not catch or my point of view.

I came out of this afternoon's matinee, drained. I sat in my hot automobile for 5 minutes with the engine on before I noticed that I hadn't turned the air conditioner on. I can not believe that I didn't walk out afer the first ten minutes of the 25 minute opening battle in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. If you are weak of heart or of stomach, do not see this movie. If this movie would have been made in the 60's, when I grew up, I would have had nightmares for years. This is not a movie for children and many adolescents. Wait until they've learned a little bit about the war in the vanilla coated history texts in school.

I'm not going to critique the movie but I will, with your patience, the audience in attendance with me. Besides the slob sitting behind me belching and flatulating during the movie, there were 3 patrons who stood out.

The first was a gentlemen who continually talked throughout the entire movie, which irritates me to death. I will assume that he was there in France on D-Day because by the time I got really engrossed in the movie, I found myself waiting to hear what he had to say about what he saw. I don't think he cried during the movie, at all.

The second was a little boy whom his father had taken to see this movie. He had been running up and down the aisles several times, whch again irritates me. After the movie was over, the boy and his father were outside the theater. The boy was crying on his father's shoulder. The father was a Viet-Nam veteran. You could tell by the tattoos and the light vest with patches that he wore. With all the movies about Viet-Nam that this child probably had seen, I was stunned by this child's reaction. I applaud the veteran for handling the situation because it turns out the kid had upchucked several times in the men's room, in reaction to some of the graphic scenes.

The third was an older woman who was sitting in front of me and to my left. She, too, talked throughout the movie; ditto on the irritation. It turns out that she lost her husband on Omaha Beach. She had not shed one tear during the entire movie. Her voice never cracked once.

Then there was me. An overweight 45 year old handicapped acounting clerk on medical leave from my job. I cried a lot,, shuttered at many scenes, closed my eyes on many occassions, laughed once and then realized what had just happened. I cried because I wasn't there, neither was the boy. But the elders in the crowd did not seem to be bothered as much as some of the younger people, excluding the Viet-Nam vet who calmly tried to quiet his son. I probably would have yelled at him for running up and down the aisles.

This is by far the first movie that I've seen that had just physically weakened me. I've seen movies that I've applauded at that I've walked out on, and that I was highly exhilirated after seeing but none was as emotionally charged as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

I hope a lot of the Generation Xers see this movie. They have never gone through a war like the baby boomers did with Viet-Nam or Korea or the older generation who had to endure a lot of hardships during the 2 World Wars. I hope they stop and appreciate what those men on Normandy did and what they stood for. In this day of think only for yourself, it might change a few attitudes about responsibility and pride for tradition that this country stands for. On major national holidays, I no longer see the American flag as frequently as I did when I was younger.

Sorry. I tend to ramble and go off on tangents, sometimes. Thank you for allowing me to do this. Comments appreciated.

    Fred Weber     famw@webtv.net

P.S.-I did see the squad with 8 soldiers walking down the road, after the first soldier died and the way the rifles were covered. I was under the impression that they used condoms, like in THE BIG RED ONE. I rate SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, 4 out of 4 and 10 out of 10..

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