# Saving Private Ryan (1998)

### reviewed by
Bill Chambers

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN **** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers; wchamber@netcom.ca

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starring Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Matt Damon screenplay by Robert Rodat directed by Steven Spielberg

In this fictional but truthful picture, Tom Hanks stars as Captain Miller; his squadron has just survived D-Day at Omaha Beach when they are reassigned. Essentially a P.R. move from the head office, Miller and his seven men must search for a missing paratrooper, one Private James Francis Ryan-whose three brothers have been killed in action-and send him home to his distraught mother. The search leads them across French battlefields... I suppose it's not giving away too much to say that they eventually locate Ryan (Damon) and discover their moral duty as soldiers in an active war surpasses the exact definition of their mission.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is possibly the most violent movie I have ever seen. At least, it seemed that way because of its connection to history and, in the second half of the film, my emotional attachment to the characters. In addition to Miller, we have Sgt. Horvath (Sizemore), who collects dirt from the various places he's travelled; New Yorker Pvt. Reiben (Burns), eager to impress with attitude; gentle T/4 Medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), whom at one point recopies a letter for a dead soldier so that it is not mailed-out bloodstained; lone-Jew Pvt. Mellish (Adam Goldberg), for whom the war has obviously become deeply personal; Cpl. Upham (Jeremy Davies), a gun-shy translator fluent in French and German; God-fearing Pvt. Jackson (Barry Pepper) and Pvt. Caprazo (Vin Diesel), both exemplary servicemen.

I have just done what the filmmakers basically resist: breaking the squadron down into genre types. The soldiers remain ordinary human beings in unpredictable circumstances to the bitter end, by turns cowardly, certifiable, happy, melancholy, etc. If one of them dies, we feel as sad as if another of them dies. Like combat, such deaths are always shocking and instantaneous. Spielberg's latest film doesn't just have a generic, you-are-there feeling: his camera zigzags like a scared LIFE photographer trapped in the heat of the action, racing behind the troops, falling into the sea, dizzily lingering on some gruesome carnage, like the man who is searching for his missing arm, or the boy who takes off his shot helmet in relief only to be killed seconds later. The layered story places its anti-violent and anti-war sentiments clearly up-front: the only way to hammer home the horror of armed conflict is to display it uncensored. At one point, Reiben asks, ‘Why risk the eight of us for one guy?' and the irony was not lost on me: nobody questions the validity of their involvement in WWII, a P.R. move at its heart, also.

Which is why I'm only hesitant about the final shot of the movie: an American flag flapping in the breeze. Proudly? That's open to debate; I never felt SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was particularly patriotic, to its credit. This is a smaller story than "America's War Effort". I'll unabashedly admit it reduced me to tears. If it takes a popular entertainment to put into context for so many young people what has mostly been relegated to dryly-written textbooks, thank goodness it is one of integrity and catharsis.

    -Bill Chambers; July, 1998
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