Saving Private Ryan

In late July 1998, Steven Spielberg landed on the American public with his World War II film Saving Private Ryan, which won the war of critics, veterans, scholars, historians, and the general movie going public. All that is left is the cleanup at the box office and the final awarding of medals such as the Oscar for Best Picture. The bottom line of the positive critical evaluations is this, Saving Private Ryan is a new and different World War II combat film because it finally refutes the dishonesty of previous Hollywood movies of the genre. I believe this was one of the best movies of all time even to this day. We even used this movie in football to look at and we had to come up with certain ideas to tie it to our team. Saving Private Ryan represents another case in the ongoing struggle for film historians, who must constantly deal with modern critics who judge artistic events by the standards of their own times. For the combat movie, this means if there's no blood and guts, there's no glory. Although there is no question that Spielberg made a fine film or that Tom Hanks and the rest of the cast have done an excellent job, there are issues of film history to be addressed in evaluation. No one is going to argue with the World War 2 veterans who have stated that Saving Private Ryan is the most realistic presentation of combat they've seen. There is also no question but that Spielberg has achieved integrity in his images. He closely consulted with historian Stephen E. Ambrose and Dale Dye, a retired Marine Corps captain who acted as his chief military adviser. The issue to be discussed is not combat accuracy but rather accuracy about the history of the World War 2 combat genre and Saving Private Ryan's place in that history. Overall, I think this movie has so much meaning to it and because it is so good and realistic at the time it makes the movie that much better. As the action unfolds, the audience sees blood, vomit, dead fish, dismembered arms and legs, wounds spurting fountains of blood, torsos disintegrating while being dragged to safety. Men drown, are wounded, and are shot and killed in a chaotic atmosphere of fear and bewilderment. Medics are forced to make ruthless decisions about the wounded.