The first part of this movie, the landings on Omaha beach, D-Day, are some of the best action sequences we’ve ever seen on film. With best I mean most authentic and realistic, which also means really gory and horrifying - but that is war. These scenes are something out of the ordinary.

However, after the landings — to my disappointment — the movie turns into an ordinary Hollywood creation. The story is less then average and during the battle at the end all that authenticity from the beginning is gone. Now the soldiers move and act nothing like soldiers, they don’t use the right techniques or movements, Spielberg even admitted to this himself with the comment that he wanted it to be more dramatic.

Another thing with authenticity that I found really disturbing (yeah, I guess it’s just me…) was the use of the most classic countersign in history, Flash answered by Thunder. This was to be used by the Allied forces on D-Day, and we hear it in Saving Private Ryan, twice. The problem is that both times the soldier shouts “Thunder” and waits for the countersign “Flash”, not the correct way of Flash-Thunder.

The cinematography and sound editing is great, and that together with the opening sequence is what keeps this movie away from total failure for me. I don’t understand what all the fuzz is about with this movie, yes the Omaha beach landing scenes are amazing but it’s hardly the best WWII movie out there if you ask me. It’s currently at place 65 on IMDb’s top 250 movies list, and one of the movies with the most votes. It won 5 Oscars (including two for sound and one for cinematography).

This movie is one of the reasons why I want to work on this project — I want to show people that there are so many more movies then many seem to think. Saving Private Ryan is overrated, I can’t think of another way of putting it.