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spielberg in the 80s

• raiders of the lost ark
• e.t.
• indiana jones and the temple of doom
• indiana jones and the last crusade

spielberg in the 90s

• jurassic park
• schindler's list
• the lost world: jurassic park
• saving private ryan

spielberg in the 00s

• a.i.: artificial intelligence
• minority report
• catch me if you can
• the terminal
• war of the worlds
• munich
• indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull

spielberg in the 10s

• the adventures of tintin: the secret of the unicorn
• war horse

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There are a lot of things I really admire about Saving Private Ryan, and a lot of things that bother me immensely. There's stuff in it that I know is ostensibly great, yet fails to reach me; there's stuff that shouldn't matter to me at all, but ranks highly among the reasons I watch and re-watch the film. Private Ryan must be one of Spielberg's most uneven films... the reason DVD players were invented, so we can skip to the good stuff.

The single biggest flaw in Ryan is the bracketing sequence, featuring an old-and-wrinkly James Ryan visiting the graves of the men who sacrificed their lives, back in '44, to bring him home. Literally, there has never been a single scene in any film I have ever reviewed that has had so specifically altered the rating of that film - if I were a star-ratings sort of guy, I would say that the present-day sequences of Ryan knock the whole film down from four stars to three. Opening and closing on a gossamer American flag ruffling in the wind, featuring a gigantic extended family witnessing and supporting Grandpa's mourning, these sequences are solid ass from start to finish - they turn Saving Private Ryan from, legitimately, one of the most impressive and ambitious films about war ever mounted, into some kind of lame movie-of-the-week. Now that I own the film on DVD, thankfully, I never have to watch those scenes again.

There's also a serious problem with watching Ryan in 2004, which, to be fair, shouldn't really be credited against the film itself, but is disruptive nonetheless: everybody in this movie is a celebrity. In 1997, the film emerged just as Matt Damon and Giovanni Ribisi were becoming popular; in the years since, Vin Diesel, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Davies and Adam Goldberg have all become recognizeable movie faces. You know that feeling you had, early in the film, when Ted Danson appears as a G.I. in a French town, and you're like, "Whoa, shit, it's Ted Danson"? That now happens every five minutes in this flick, with every new character who appears. It should be a credit to the casting of the film, that it was able to assemble so many up-and-coming actors, but watching the film now, this phenomenon is just distracting.

And as scripts go, Ryan's fairly lame. It's a thin story to hang a 2 hour and 50 minute movie on, a bit too contrived for this writer's taste; perhaps this is a clash of style vs. substance. I don't particularly buy the notion that soldiers of the realistic, gritty interpretation we're witnessing here would be prone to pondering the meaning of the war while trudging through French fields. Even ol' Captain Willard had the sense to keep his musings in his head while the four other goofs on the PBR Streetgang talked about surfing; when straining for subtextual depth, Ryan seems to be at odds with itself.

Fortunately, the script is really only an excuse for Steven Spielberg to lens the definitive collection of World War II battle sequences, and in this regard, Saving Private Ryan is simply top notch. This extends far beyond the mammoth D-Day invasion sequence, although this 22-minute slice of filmmaking, all on its own, will be studied and debated for decades to come, one of the most ennervating and captivating portrayals of combat ever put to film. The other sequences - particularly the final defence of Remel, and an unnecessary assault on a machine gun emplacement - work equally well, and in some cases better, presenting a soldier's-eye view of the combat environment that is completely effective in transporting the viewer into the mindset of each combatant. The battle scenes of Ryan are a Spielberg masterpiece, locked inside a less-masterful film.

They are given hearty support by some of the finest photography I have ever seen, one of only two times that Janusz Kaminski's efforts on a film haven't been wasted on me. A healthy mid-range slice of the ENR trend that came and went through Hollywood before digital grading became de rigeur, this film positively gleams from the edges - every raindrop, every fleck of dirt on every soiled uniform, leap off the screen in breathtaking imagery. That this is accomplished in a film that is almost always attempting to subvert the camera - throwing shutters out of alignment, tossing blood onto the lens, etc. - is all the more impressive.

In the lead role, Tom Hanks is fantastic; he is paired nicely with an even-better Tom Sizemore, who provides a nice foil for Hanks' more meditative Captain Miller. And there's a reason that the entire platoon has gone on to such fortune and glory - these are great, great actors. I'm particularly fond of Barry Pepper's devout sharpshooter; there's something uncannily powerful about watching this intense fella call on God to guide his bullets.

In the end, Saving Private Ryan both is and isn't deserving of its own hype. It is a film that cries out to be seen, offering so much for the viewer; but unlike Spielberg's previous forays into drama (and specifically, WWII-era drama - Schindler's List and Empire of the Sun), it lacks the cohesion that make a film a complete experience, rather than just an interesting collection of memorable scenes. For all its pomp and moment and undeniable filmmaking ambition, it remains a film that makes me wonder when Steven Spielberg is going to get back to making Steven Spielberg movies.