Film Review With Sam Larner

Saving Private Ryan

Now, over the past few weeks I have reviewed a lot of very good films. Many of you will look at the title and think that that will continue. I’m afraid not. I don’t hate “Saving Private Ryan” it’s just it’s not good enough to warrant the vast numbers of Oscars it won.

I will say in its defence that the first thirty minutes is brilliant and probably one of the best sequences in war movie history. However, it’s over two hours long and for the rest of it’s run time it just isn’t up to scratch and, dare I say, pretty boring. It’s as if Spielberg filmed the first section then thought “Yeah, that’s the Oscar in the bag, okay for the rest of it just do some fight scenes and an old man in a graveyard”.

“Saving Private Ryan” carries a huge weight around with it and the weight is the quality of the opening section. When you set the standard that high you really need to keep it there for the whole film and I’m afraid Spielberg doesn’t.

The rest of the film isn’t without merit, in fact there are some quite good scenes, for instance the final battle scene, however it all feels as if it is tacked on and not part of the same movie.

Equally it is, in the mould of “Forest Gump”, pretty sentimental and it seems purely there to aid the Oscar pledge. As Kate Winslett parodies in “Extras” it seems that the only requirement to getting an Oscar is to make a film that is a tearjerker and also deals with so called “important” themes. Hence why “Titanic” has got a good few Oscars thanks mostly to dewy eyed factor and ignoring Winslett and Di Caprio’s fairly poor acting.

So yes, “Saving Private Ryan” is fine for thirty minutes but fairly non descript for the other hour and a half.