Movies often have a very important story to tell and the time it takes to tell that story is important. If a movie adds extraneous details, it feels like they take too long and go too far, but does that mean all movies should be tight 90 minute thrill rides? No. In fact, there are some phenomenal movies that have a long runtime, and yet feel shorter than several of those 90 minute movies because they are perfectly paced.
If you were asked to make a list of the best movies about World War 2, Saving Private Ryan would at least enter the conversation. The movie is a brutal and harrowing look at what soldiers had to do to fight for global freedom. And as I said at the beginning this movie is long, nearly running 3 hours. But the way the movie pushes the pace of its action scenes and then keeps the emotional stakes of its quieter moments keeps the movie from feeling like it’s dragging, and the movie does this by keeping its characters human.
At the time of making Saving Private Ryan Tom Hanks was probably the biggest movie star in the cast. He’d won his second of two back-to-back Oscars less than five years earlier. He had the lead in the first movie by new animation studio Pixar, and yet he hadn’t made a movie in over a year and the last movie he had made (That Thing You Do!) was in no way a runaway success. And so, Hanks still had this everyman quality about him that made him the perfect person to lead this ensemble.
And that’s what you have to remember, in 1998 this cast, though many of them bigger and more recognizable actors now, were mostly unknowns who looked like your average everyman. This allows the cast to flourish together and ultimately leads to the characters having real emotional weight in their performances. This weight creates stakes and ultimately causes us to invest in these men as they go through this harrowing journey both physically and emotionally.
And it’s this dynamic and investment in character and story that tightens that feeling of watching this movie. It makes the movie’s 3-hour runtime just fly by without sacrificing the plot or character growth that we need to properly invest in the movie. And at the end of the day, it makes the movie stand out even more than it already did. It makes Saving Private Ryan a masterpiece of war-torn storytelling.
So, let’s break everything down.
All Spielberg movies will be judged based on the same five pieces of criteria.
Acting – Are the performances good and do they serve the story or are they distracting and awkward?
Story and Dialogue – Does the story being told make sense and is the use of dialogue allow it to succeed or does the story struggle and/or the dialogue drag it down
Shooting and Editing – How is the camera used, how are the shots arranged, what other elements are used to enhance the movie?
Design – How does the movie look? Does it help the movie or hurt the movie?
Iconic Moment – Spielberg has made several big iconic moments throughout cinema, what are they, how many of them are there, and which ones stand out the most?
All these criteria will be judged on a score of 10 for a total score of 50.
So here is my breakdown of Saving Private Ryan:
Acting – Tom Hanks is at his best here. He commands the screen without overpowering the rest of the men and the entire ensemble supports each other brilliantly creating a sense of camaraderie, trust, and brotherhood that just makes their slow depreciation even more painful. It’s a strong ensemble drama that needs to be notices as several of the stars were not the now big names they once were. (10/10)
Story and Dialogue – As I said the story is so high stakes in terms of both physical and emotional conflict that it moves incredibly well and the interactions, especially between the soldiers, is so brilliantly constructed that you feel this is far more realistic of a story than you might at first think. (10/10)
Shooting and Editing – So many of the shots are wide open, claustrophobic, shot from odd angles, and designed to put the audience right into the battle alongside the men. Each character is given their perspective and we the audience are as well, and the way this movie transitions from piece to piece is touching, brilliant, and ultimately so powerful. (10/10)
Design – Everything in this movie looks like a warzone. The way the men are made up to look weary, hot, exhausted is so precise and it shows right from the opening moments. Plus Spielberg took great care to get extras for the invasion who actually had missing limbs to portray the carnage, which is a phenomenal detail. (10/10)
Iconic Moment – There will likely never be a harder to watch war scene than the opening Normandy invasion in this movie. It is brutal, relentless, high stakes, and at that point we don’t know who we are attached to so everyone is expendable in some way. It’s only once the dust settles that we get the chance to move forward and shows just how to do violence in a way that is both dramatic and powerful without getting into excessive. (10/10)
Total Score: 36/50
Current Ranking:
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Jurassic Park
Saving Private Ryan
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Schindler’s List
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Jaws
Hook
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Amistad
Duel
Empire of the Sun
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
The Color Purple
Twilight Zone: The Movie
The Sugarland Express
1941
Always
And now we move to the 21st century. From here technology flourishes and Spielberg again makes movies that affect the way we view not only the past and present but on into the future. It’s an exciting time but we’ll have to wait until next time to see it.
But until then, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!
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