Saving Private Ryan- Review

I do generally enjoy war films, particularly ones that have the power to educate whilst also bringing to life a story that offers the audience a chance to connect to characters on a personal level or bring some other sub-story into the mix. Unfortunately for me, I didn't quite get that with Saving Private Ryan. I went in knowing nothing aside from being a war genre film and came out rather disappointed. It isn't a shockingly bad film, but it just didn't hit the mark that I expected it to being that this film is a classic. It's hard to talk about this film because it really didn't do all that much for me and if anything, I felt like I'd heard/ seen it all before.

Steven Spielberg's film takes place during the invasion of Normandy in World War II and without revealing too much, explores in a partial recount, the loss of many American troops at the hands of German soldiers, the graphic nature of war and debunking the "everyone's expendable" tripe.

First and foremost, I didn't have a problem with the acting as such and believed that Tom Hanks and Matt Damon were convincing in their roles. However, I was not able to emotionally connect with either one of them and felt more as if I was just watching them dart across the screen with minimal backstory to their independent lives. If this film had time to include a few sequences of character backstories in the form of memories (rather than verbal recounts), I could have possibly had more to say on whether or not I connected with them. It's a shame really, since this film deserves some form of attachment or emotion from the audience.

Secondly, the historical value. This event really happened and of course it's terrible that such a horrific event occurred, but the way in which all this history is filed into the script comes across as more of a history lesson than an actual paced and steady film that gave the audience a chance to sit with and think about. I don't know about you, but I like it when a film includes history and a percentage of something else (such as a character perspective, fictional or not). In saying that, I did like the portrayal of the violence and gore. It did captivate the shocking injuries and fatalities of war and most certainly subjected me, as an audience member, to how disturbing it must have been for everyone watching those injuries and deaths unfold before them.

This film isn't unworthy of a view and if you're unfamiliar with the invasion of Normandy, it'll be an eye opener. There really isn't much room for any sympathy or empathy and what's really disappointing is that I can't really retrieve much else from what was nearly three hours of screen time. It's disappointing that not much else was done, despite many opportunities to do so. However, this film isn't bad and will obviously appeal to a variety of different people.

Score: 5/10.