`Ryan' Rules

Spielberg, Hanks, Damon and Davies create
an unforgettable picture of World War Ifs D-Day.

aving Private Ryan may just b e
the best war movie ever made
It may be one of the best
movies ever made, period.
If the American Film Institute had
waited another year to compile its list
of the 100 greatest American movies,
Ryan would have been among the top
of the list. That's how good Ryan is.
Will Ryan win a third Best Actor
Oscar for Tom Hanks? It should. And
it certainly should snare every Best
Director award for Steven Spielberg
from the Golden Globes on through
the Academy Awards.
Yet with all that, Ryan may not be
on everyone's must-see list. And there's
a simple answer for that. Ryan is a
blood-and-guts drama — emphasis on
the blood and guts.
Audiences are going to need a
strong stomach for this one. This is a
veins-in-your-face movie that vividly
re-creates the stark horror of combat.
This is not comic-book or James
Bond-like violence. This is as close to
the real thing as hopefully any of us
will ever get. If Spielberg set out to cre-
ate an anti-war movie within the con-
text of a war movie, he succeeded.
In many ways, Ryan is Titanic for
guys. While women flocked to last
year's epic hit, often dragging their
dates with them, that isn't likely to be
the case with Saving Private Ryan. And
that's a pity because Ryan is a far supe-
rior film. Not only does it have a plot,
but it showcases incredible acting. And
those were two things Titanic greatly
lacked.
Young adult heartthrob Matt
Damon, who plays Ryan, may be this
year's Leonardo DiCaprio, but his
good looks aren't going to be enough
to get bevies of young females to
want to challenge the R rating Ryan
properly carries. Plus, Damon is not
on screen until the last hour of the
movie, and he has no love interest. In
fact, there are no women who are
integral to the plot other than Ryan's
Steven Spielberg directs Torn Hanks.

.

Janusz Kaminski, who won an
Academy Award for his black-and-white
cinematography on Spielberg's Schindlers
List, creates a documentary-like effect in
Ryan. And it comes from more than just
using hand-held cameras.

& © 199 8 DREAM WORKS L. L. C. a nd PARAMOUNT PI CTUR ES and AMBLIN ENTERTAI NMENT

S

mother, and she is more important as
an off-screen presence.
Ryan works on both the level of an
adventure movie and an ensemble piece.
It is intense. It is gripping. And it is real-
istic in depicting the hell of warfare.

TM

ALAN ABRAMS
Special to the Jewish News

There are scenes in Ryan that look
as if they were filmed by the on-the-
spot newsreel photographers who
accompanied the troops at D-Day. But
the American public never saw the
realism and horror of Omaha Beach
because they were edited out as harm-
ful to national morale.
While Hanks will reap the lion's
share of critic's praise for his portrayal
of Capt. John Miller, another perfor-
mance is every bit as powerful.
Jeremy Davies (Cpl. Upham)
becomes virtually the audience's rep-
resentative on-screen. It is through
him that we share the terror of being
thrust into the instant life-or-death
struggles of combat. His mistake has
a great impact on who survives
Captain Miller's mission.
Ryan is about heroism and cow-
ardice. It is about strategy anT panic
under fire. And a lot of its success in
conveying those emotions are because
of Davies.
Captain Miller's mission is to
take his group of eight men and search
for one soldier, Pvt. Ryan. Three of
Ryan's brothers have died in combat
within days of each other, and the
U.S. War Department and Army
Chief of Staff George C. Marshall have
recognized the public relations value of
finding and returning alive the.fourth
Ryan brother to his bereaved mother.
Ryan is found, but when he
hears the news about his brothers, he
tells Miller he wants to stay with his
unit, who are defending a bridge in a
bombed-out French village. Why?-
Because to Ryan, the men in his unit
are now his brothers.
It is here that the story plays out,
although audiences will have picked
up Spielberg's telegraphed clue in the
beginning of the movie about who will
survive the carnage. Still, there will be
few dry eyes in the theater when the
end credits begin to roll. Just be thank-
ful for dark auditoriums.
If I could give Ryan the entire
Milky Way, I'd gladly do it, but I'm
restricted to a maximum of four stars.
Rated R x:x4xx:xx:g

7/24
1998

Detroit Jewish News

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