Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good film but no masterpiece
Comment: The first scenes of "Saving Private Ryan" are spectacular. You are with the landing force as it hits the beach at Normandy. Shells are exploding, landing craft are blowing up and machine gun bullets are pinging off of metal. Craft bow hatches are let down only to let machine gun bullets enter and wipe out the would-be invaders. Still other soldiers, loaded down with ammo and weapons, jump out into deep water to sink and drown on the spot.
Survivors scramble to the beach where they are shot down in the scores. Eventually, they organize, push through with Bangalor mines and are able to destroy points of German resistance. Germans who surrender are mown down without mercy. [Hey, What about the Geneva Convention?]. After this exciting segment, the movie settles down to a pretty average World War II movie. We win most of the fights.
Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Conquest of Mexico
Customer Rating: Summary: D-pressing
Comment: I know a lot of people consider this some kind of classic, but I find it to be one of the most depressing films I've ever watched. I'll take "To Hell and Back," "The Big Red One," or "Sands of Iwo Jima," to name a few, over this film anyday.
I know "War is Hell," and a terrible thing and all, but I don't need those facts driven home quite this forcibly.
This movie is a bummer to watch and I'll never watch it again (with all due respect to Tom Hanks, a great actor)!
