#71 - Saving Private Ryan

Meh. Sure, the war scenes were great, and some of the characters were memorable, but was I moved by this 1998 war movie? No. This was the first time I'd ever seen the legendary first 30 minutes of the movie, and to be honest, I was expecting more. In my opinion, the first fifth of the movie was one of the worst parts. Please don't kill me.

I think this, much like "The Sixth Sense," is a movie which is permanently stuck in the "just good" category, not able to transcend greatness into perfection. Call me old-fashioned, but I think 1994's "Pulp Fiction" should be the most recent movie on the list.

The story is of course simple. Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks at his usual level of greatness, is sent to locate and procure the safe return of a paratrooper whose three brothers had died. Capt. Miller assembles a battalion of sorts, including the film's most endearing and frustrating character, a timid cartographer and interpreter, to go out and find the soldier who may be alive, wounded, or dead.

Along the way, people die, as in most war movies ever made. And the film ends with a bloody showdown that I think is doubly as good, as interesting, as the first thirty-minute D-Day sequence.

And that brings us back to the shy interpreter, Timothy Upham, played by Jeremy Davies. When he does the cowardly thing and refuses to save his comrade, though it would be easy to do so, he is taking a stand that it is clear will haunt him for the rest of his life. Played poignantly, pitifully, and perfectly, Davies brings humor and life to this rather drab film.

There are patches of greatness, of course. The directing is top-notch, perhaps Spielberg's best non-blockbuster film. And Tom Hanks as the schoolteacher-turned-military captain is pensive and intriguing. But where the movie fails is its desperate appeals to emotion. Final speeches, most of them consisting of the sentence "Tell my wife I love her," pepper the entire film, and they begin to lose their punch after a while. Maybe it's the Millennial in me showing, but the movie simply bored me. I know I may stand alone, but it's the truth.