ABC had the ‘traditional’ Veteran’s Day movie and again it was ‘Saving Private Ryan‘.
Directed by Spielberg, the movie sports Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and a
bunch of others. A fictional movie about a bunch of Rangers who’s
mission is to bring a paratrooper home, just because 3 of his brothers
died in earlier battles. Like a green card so to say. And it all plays
around D-Day 1944.
Which already shows how ‘enthusiastic’ I am about this movie. Not
so. There are a couple of major annoyances in the storyline: first of
all Spielberg fools us thinking that ‘the veteran’ at the start of the
movie must have been the personage as played by Tom Hanks (Capt.
Miller). Which isn’t the case and since it isn’t, nobody can explain me
how a paratrooper dropped in the midst of France can have flashbacks of
the actual landing at Omaha Beach. And the ‘green card story’
makes it all a make up story in the style of Hollywood. We see it in
the rest of the movie, where everything is turned into a ‘bad vs. evil’
contest. And tearjerker-scenes with swash-mooshy orchestra
strings predictably tuning in. Can it get worser than that?
If you want to see this movie, watch for the first 15 minutes
(Omaha Beach) and then close your eyes the rest of the movie. Which is
a shame. If you need to watch a better war movie (if they exist), run
to your video rental and take a look at ‘A Thin Red Line’.