SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

D-Day of the Dead

I doubted that I'd be able to review this flick here. After all, it's supposed to be one of those much-anticipated 'serious' Steven Spielberg epics ala Amistad and Schindler's List starring Oscar grubbing Tom Hanks. But Spielberg has slipped B-movie thrills into A-movie productions before, and here he pulls it off again.Since he's gained respectability, it's easy to forget that he made his fortune as a master of adventure.

The Spielberg name bagged this one an R rating, but this has to be the most gruesomely gory movie of the year. The opening is misleading, a sappy visit to Arlington Cemetery that serves as lead-in to the WW2 flashback, tinged by the most cloyingly melodramatic music that John Williams can pump out. But once underway, the music disappears and Spielberg pulls no punches. The following 20 minutes details Hanks' attempted assault on Omaha Beach, one of the most astounding sequences of film I've ever seen. Spielberg reteams with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski for a tour de force that puts you right alongside Captain Hanks and his sidekick Sgt. Tom Sizemore while the full horror of war literally erupts around them. Most audiences expecting another solemn and heartwarming tale of American heroism will be justly shocked at the reality our veterans have kept secret from even their own families for so many years. That reality is that War really is Hell on Earth - not a bunch of clean-cut G.I. Joes raising the flag while chuckling at Bob Hope, but an unrelenting rain of bullets pounding around you while you try not to drown in the blood of your freshly-butchered buddies.

Hanks triumphs again, his affable spirit surprisingly able to fill the role of a gruff leader of a warrior band (precisely the point of his character). His supporting cast - among them familiar characters like Edward Burns, Adam Goldberg, and Ted Danson - all do primo work in highly strenuous and uncomfortable circumstances.

The plot concerns a quest through war torn France to find the title soldier (Matt Damon) before he joins his three brothers, who were all killed in action in a few days. Though his message is solemn, Spielberg can't hide the giddy (but sick) fun that a war/horror movie like this can provide. Much of the material here feels like something out of movies like The Guns of Navarone or TV shows like Rat Patrol. And he falls easily into the time-tested Lost Patrol device for the finale, as Hanks and company dig in to defend a bridge while the frightening Nazi war machine thunders down on them.

Explosions; gun fu; bazooka fu; grenade fu; monster tanks; gouts of blood; heads roll; arms and legs roll; heck, everything rolls.

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