'Saving Private Ryan'

My friend Rajesh has always stated that he hated Saving Private Ryan despite the first 24 minutes of the film being one of the greatest 24 minutes in film history.

He always points to beginning and end of the film: When an aged Private Ryan is visiting an Allied cemetery in Normandy, France and the camera fades from his wrinkled face to the faces of Tom Hanks at the onset of the D-Day invasion of France and then back to the cemetery at the end of the film.

Yes. This is extremely cornball and it's unbelieve that Steven Spielberg would even do this in such a heartbreaking film.

I always kind of defended Saving Private Ryan. Not that I loved it or even really liked it. I saw it twice in theaters and not once since. However, I thought at least it was OK.

Watching it again, 12 years after the fact, I completely understand where my friend is coming from and I was in shock and horror as I realized what Spielberg did to this film.

What sucked about Saving Private Ryan:

Adam Goldberg's A Jew!
Goldberg is overtly Jewish. He kind of flaunts it. In Saving Private Ryan, he portrays Stanley Mellish, as wiseacre private and a veteran of many battle. Well, for the next two hours, he wants you, every moviegoer in the world and every character in France to know just how Jewish he is. He seems very aware of the German's attitudes of the Jews. He seems very unconcerned about how the French, Polish or Americans thought about the Jews. Anyway, he continues to blet us over the head with his Jewishness to the point that you thought he had an inferiority complex.

Barry Pepper's A Sniper!
Like Golberg, Pepper's Daniel Jackson is a stereotype: The wise-beyond-his-years southern sniper, who quotes scripture while picking off German soldiers and who is probably more used to shooting dove or deer rather than Nazis. But he kinda enjoys all of it. Shooting, that is. And he's damn good. And he takes every opportunity to let you know just how good he is. By 45 minutes into the film, you want to take Jackson by the shoulders and scream, "OK, you're a good shot! We get it!"

Tom Hanks Is Mysterious!
World War II was just a sidenote to this story. Hanks is the grizzled veteran. Not cut out for leading, killing or making decisions that clearly weigh too heavily on his conscience. To cope, Hanks' character, John Miller, keeps his life a secret. He doesn't talk about home and only to the point that his mission is failing and his troops are rebelling does he pull the curtain back a little bit. Miller's mysteriousness is a simple plot tool for Spielberg in a thinly veiled attempt to making a two-hour film into a three-hour film.

Matt Damon's A Crybaby!
So, Miller and Co. are charged with going deep into France amid angry Nazis to find Private James Ryan, of Iowa, in order to escort him back to the front and a one-way ticket home. They find him helping guard a strategic bridge with tired, underarmed troops. Ryan refuses to leave. Miller acquiesces, but in order to carry out his assignment, he stays to defend the bridge. Ryan gives this spirited speech about staying with the only brothers he still had alive. Blah, blah, blah. The Americans are outmanned and outgunned by "50" German troops and tanks. I say "50" only because we're told it's "50" up until the point that they kill about 70 Germans and there's still a dozen left over. ANYWAY, almost all the good guys die and the remaining few run back to the other side of this strategic bridge in order to A) survive and B) blow up the bridge. While trying to blow up the bridge, Miller is injured in an explosion. He's in a daze. There's an onslaught. All seems lost. Then we catch "brave" Ryan sitting with his knees to his chest, crying like a big ol' baby. What happened to that big speech? Ryan wasn't near as brave as we thought. Then again, it's Spielberg. If he can betray a character's spirit to making something tear jerking, he will.

That's why Saving Private Ryan sucks.