SAVING PRIVATE RYAN |
| BASICS - Action War Movie set in Normandy over a 7 day period beginning 6 June 1944
during operation 'Overlord' the allied invasion of Europe. Director: Steven Spielberg;
Duration: 2hours 50 minutes; Screenplay:Robert Rodat Leads: Tom Hanks (Cpt. Miller),Edward
Burns(Pvt.Reiben),Jeremy Davies(Cpl.Upham), Tom Sizemore(Sgt.Horvath),Von
Diesel(Pvt.Caparzo),Giovanni Ribisi(Medic Wade). PLOT - The allied landing from amphibious craft under heavy machine gun fire and cannon shells is portrayed in startlingly bloody detail during the first 30 minutes. Three out of four GI Ryan brothers have been killed in action and it has been decided by US military command as an act of compassion to pull the remaining brother, one private James Ryan, out of the combat arena and return him to the USA. Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is given the task of finding Ryan and bringing him out. On this shell is built a well executed and exciting war movie. REVIEW - Very compelling action especially at the beginning with jerky hand-held camera techniques hammering home the carnage and mayhem and the effects of the rain of bullets on the all-too vulnerable bodies of the invading soldiers struggling in the cold Atlantic water. The use of distorted audio to mimic the effects of exploding cannon shells on the human ear is particularly effective I thought. Having seen the film once I happened to be browsing in my local music shop and noticed a CD of music from the movie on sale. I realised that at no time during the nearly 3 hours of film had I been conscious of any musical sound-track such was the intensity of the assault on the senses and sensibility. I saw the movie again and other aspects of the film including the music (which was fairly mediocre) came more into focus. It is not possible to absorb a constant diet of military action and the next part of the movie moves on to more prosaic territory in the mould of films such as Platoon. Apart from Captain Miller, superbly portrayed by Tom Hanks as the intellectual-cum-efficient-military-man the characterisation is not especially interesting and there is a tendency to slip into caricature - the hothead, the Jew, the protector of innocents, the Irish Catholic mother. This tends to be compensated for by the excellent action in the movie and Hank's superb acting. It is probably not reasonable to expect much room in this type of movie for ironic statements or for revealing interesting aspects of human character (there is no female interest for example) but more interaction between the company of soldiers could have been risked. I visited the scene of the main battle on Omaha beach at the time of the 50th anniversary of the Landings in 1994 and can confirm that the overwhelming sense of the waste of human life that one experiences on seeing the graves of many of the 10000 allied soldiers lost on that day has been accurately conveyed by Spielberg. |