Saving Private Ryan: Critic Reviews

For all the care and thoughtfulness that follow in the story, I never could shake the impression that all I was watching was every other war film Spielberg had ever seen.

I found it tediously manipulative despite its Herculean energy.

No further commentary is needed when the raw brutality of combat is presented as indelibly as it is here.

The greatest Steven Spielberg movie since the last great one? Sure.

A war film that, entirely aware of its genre's conventions, transcends them as it transcends the simplistic moralities that inform its predecessors, to take the high, morally haunting ground.

A powerful and impressive milestone in the realistic depiction of combat, Saving Private Ryan is as much an experience we live through as a film we watch on screen.

Bloody, tragic war epic doesn't hold back.

It deserved all the honors it received, looks and sounds great on Blu-ray, and safely remains among the best war movies of all time.

Saving Private Ryan set a new benchmark for realism in WWII films, and defined war movies for a generation. A film of scope and vision rarely experienced, its award-winning cinematography and sound editing helped convey the blood-chilling images of

Private Ryan resembles the director's other so-called mature efforts by putting a positive spin on unspeakable horrors.

Violent, harrowing, and horrific; you bet. This is not a movie to take your children to see, or even a date. And it's definitely not worth seeing alone. How the ratings board gave this movie an "R" rating is a mystery. Well, maybe not.

I personally have never fought in a war before but I would go out on a limb and say that the first twenty minutes of the film may be the most realistic war scene I have seen.

It's forty minutes of steely violence and two hours of cliche-ridden flab.

Why did Spielberg make it? He wants us to imagine we can feel the terror of being there, but does that make us any wiser about this or any other conflict? Probably not.

Saving Private Ryan is an incredible movie, a near-masterpiece.

The opening 30 minutes are so devastating that much of what follows ends up feeling anticlimactic. Good, but overrated.

The movie epitomizes the paradox of all great filmmaking: It's a thrillingly violent war drama about an unbearably painful subject.

Neither wholly condemning war, nor spouting patriotism, Spielberg shows us the price we pay.

Saving Private Ryan is a first-class war movie with some absolutely brilliant, gut-wrenching moments, especially the beginning minutes.

Most of the film is an accomplished, visionary work.

It's Spielberg at his best, although the movie doesn't match the primal thrills of Jaws or the overwhelming excellence of Schindler's List.

Even the music score by John Williams, one of the most important ingredients of Spielberg's magic formula, is hardly memorable. The acting, on the other hand, is very good.

The first half hour alone forever redefines the war movie genre. Ryan has just one minor flaw: the plot is completely contrived. And if you can characterize a weak story as just a minor flaw... well, that's some damn fine filmmaking.

The movie's greatest strength lies in phenomenal performances that reach from the leads right down to the smallest supporting roles...

The platoon is an unlikely combination of heroes, cowards and crusaders.