Date: Fri 14-Aug-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

Playing-Ryan-Hanks-Spielberg

Full Text:

(rev "Saving Private Ryan" for Now Playing)

Now Playing--

Spielberg's "Ryan" Is Not A Film, Nor A Subject, To Be Taken Lightly

By Trey Paul Alexander III

"What a great movie! You've gotta go see it!" is the response one might expect

from someone who has just seen the most critically acclaimed movie to hit the

big screen so far this year. But it most probably will not be the reaction of

a moviegoer exiting a showing of Saving Private Ryan , which is the most

soul-shattering, engulfing movie I have seen in recent memory.

From the hand of director Steven Spielberg, this motion picture may well

surpass his own Schindler's List as one of those rare films that leaves you

speechless as the final credits roll, but will keep you talking days after you

have left the theatre. It's more like something one experiences than merely

watches, and the overwhelming sensation of this 2‹-hour effort is not

something I can casually recommend. It is most definitely suitable only for

mature teens and older. Many adults may also find it difficult to stomach what

is at times a stressful ordeal. But for those who can withstand its stark

realism and often frank brutality, it may prove to be as close to a

transforming encounter as mainstream movies get.

Saving Private Ryan drops the audience into the middle of World War II. After

a gripping, relentless and appropriately graphic opening scene, in which

Spielberg so palpably conveys the horror and carnage Allied soldiers faced

when they stormed Omaha Beach on the French coast in 1944, the film never lets

go of our hearts and our throats. Most movies would have used this shocking

yet riveting sequence as a climax, but Spielberg practically opens the

curtains on this representation of the bloody D-Day battle, and Saving Private

Ryan is all the more impressive because it lives up to this striking

beginning.

Tom Hanks stars as Captain John Miller, the enigmatic leader of a group of

infantrymen in the 29th Division who emerge from the initial bloodbath of the

invasion of Normandy to receive a special assignment: infiltrate the enemy

lines and retrieve the missing Private Ryan (Matt Damon), a young soldier who

is the sole survivor in a group of four brothers who went off to war. Miller's

men are reluctant to undertake such a risky task, but as good soldiers they

march off under the command of their leader and seek to bring home the lost

man.

As Miller's men begin to search the French countryside, the ominous tone set

by the unforgiving opening sequence looms over every footstep the men take.

Even during fairly tranquil exchanges, the threat of war and battle is ever

nearby. When there are moments of stillness, opportunities for the grunts to

share their minds, thoughts, hopes and memories of home, we as an audience

relish the respite from the cruelty of battle. Yet in the back of our minds,

we also steel ourselves for the possibility these characters with whom we are

beginning to identify and come to know may not get to return to the home for

which they so desperately long.

Spielberg equals the fierce, kinetic power of his opening sequence -- 30

minutes of making us feel like we're right in the thick of the battle, with

lethal bullets whizzing all around us -- by ending with a climax that now puts

faces and names on the bodies which fall so mercilessly to the rages of war.

Whereas the beginning of the film shocks with its unswerving depiction of the

gross horrors of war, the climax arguably tops it by putting men who have

become known and dear to us into another such situation. Now each death

becomes that much more devastating.

Spielberg's directorial hand has never been more sure than it is here. He uses

his proficient technical skills as a filmmaker to aid him in telling the

story, but he does not let these skills tell the tale, and the film is all the

more richer for it. Plus, he is assisted by a uniformly fine cast, with the

stellar work of Hanks at the center. Saving Private Ryan , rated R for

intense, graphic war violence and occasional profanity, earns a rating that

should not be taken lightly, but neither should its subject matter. Spielberg

has given his new film a gravity and emotional punch that warrants his strong

approach.