[.ca] Saving Private Ryan (Widescreen)

Amazon.com Essential Video:
When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds. A stalwart Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers have recently been killed in action. It's a public relations move for the Army, but it has historical precedent dating back to the Civil War. Some critics of the film have labeled the central characters stereotypes. If that is so, this movie gives stereotypes a good name: Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the hotheaded Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew, Vin Diesel as the oversize Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the soulful medic, and Jeremy Davies, who as a meek corporal gives the film its most memorable performance. The movie is as heavy and realistic as Spielberg's Oscar-winning Schindler's List, but it's more kinetic. Spielberg and his ace technicians (the film won five Oscars: editing (Michael Kahn), cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), sound, sound effects, and directing) deliver battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut. The violence is extreme but never gratuitous. The final battle, a dizzying display of gusto, empathy, and chaos, leads to a profound repose. Saving Private Ryan touches us deeper than Schindler because it succinctly links the past with how we should feel today. It's the film Spielberg was destined to make. --Doug Thomas

Additional Features:
This "special edition" contains the 25-minute featurette Into the Breach. Besides interviews with the film's actors, there are interviews with D-day veterans and World War II historian Stephen Ambrose. Real D-day footage is edited together with scenes from the film that have been changed to black and white. The highlight is a glimpse of Steven Spielberg's early films. Using his dad's camera and his friends, the teenage Spielberg made two relatively impressive short war films, Escape to Nowhere and Fighter Squad. There are also home movies his dad made while stationed in the Pacific and a short visit with the Nilands, a family that lost four brothers during the war. --Doug Thomas

extremely well done but americanized...:
spielberg has done what other directors should have done: not to be cliche. at first, i was kinda perplexe: why would the army send an unit to retrieve a single guy? i found it very illogical with what was happening. if it was the case, they would have done a lot of those kind of missions, which would have been even more illogical. battle scenes do not have music score (which is what others should have done) and we see what we would have seen in real combat: horror of war. nothing clean or any platoon leader think he's the best like those '60s war movie. it is also very americanized with the american flag at the beginning and at the end. it is a tribute to the american effort of the war but it also makes a small felling that lowers the effort of all the other allies: british, canadian, french resistance, chinese, australians and so on, because the flag makes you focus on USA (especially the amount of time your looking at the flag).

Shocking:
Shocking even for an ex infantry man...the first 20 minutes on the beaches of Normandy had me on the edge of my sit with tears rolling down my face. I recall the anxiety I was feeling watching the soldiers get hammered on the French beach. It was a totally brilliant cinematic sequence which places you first person in the middle of a battle. I truly beleive this is a must see for the younger generation who may not know what their grandparents/ great grandparents did to save the world from Nazi Germany 60+ years ago. For the war movie fan you can't miss it. One of the all time great war movies.

Saving Private Ryan:
I avoided this movie for quite awhile before I finally relented and watched it. I figured that it being a Hollywood blockbuster type movie starring Tom Hanks and all, that I would be in for another flag-waving, quasi-propagandistic American take on World War Two. Well, that's not quite the case. I actually found the combat depicted to be closer to what it must have been like than you find in most war movies. The story was also deeper than I expected, although at times it seemed a little contrived. So overall, yeah, I though that it wasn't all that bad.

Glory in the Midst of Sacerfice:
Maybe one of the bloodiest movies I've ever seen. Which is one of the cons for the movie because not all ages would know of serious impact of World War II. It was a true story of Friendship and Loyality. Touching to the heart and true to the soul. Saving Private Ryan is one of the Best Movies I've ever seen in my life. It will stay with you forever. Even if you think Romance is the only way. Or if you like only comedies, this movie will amaze you in many ways. I highly Reccommend.

All you people who complain don't appreciate what this movie is and you don't appreciate the soldiers who died!:
OK... Now, I don't know why anyone would complain about this movie. Some people say 'oh, the Omaha Beach is realistic, everything else isn't...' obviously haven't heard the VETERANS HAD A HARD TIME WATCHING THE ENTIRE MOVIE. VETERANS WERE IN THE WAR, AND I THINK THEY'D KNOW WHAT'S REALISTIC.' Saving Private Ryan is the best war movie ever made, simply because it shoves in people's faces what the war is, how it was, and what happened. It wasn't pretty at all: it was bloody, it was sad, it was like going to hell and coming back. War is what this movie shows you. War sucks. War movies, well, good war movies change your life. Example: A Bridge Too Far. Pink Floyd: The Wall. (OK, the Wall isn't really about war, but it shows what war was like, but the scenes with war sure show what it was lie.) Full Metal Jacket. Platoon. And, of course, Saving Private Ryan. This is one of the most important movies of the 20th century and should not be forgotten. Amazing movie.