Well, it seems that my "bold" statement that "Flags of Our Fathers" was a better movie than "Saving Private Ryan" wasn't much of a bold statement at all. No, I actually find quite a few war movies to be better movies than "Saving Private Ryan."

The first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" are beyond intense, and at the end of the day, I doubt any other movie in history will every be able to capture the realism of a beach invasion in the way "Saving Private Ryan" did. But for me, once that initial invasion scene is over, "Saving Private Ryan" goes from moments of excellence (the knife fight, the Corpsman death scene) to moments of cheese (giving up their socks to make "sticky bombs", pretty much anytime Tom Hanks said anything).

I used to buy into the notion that "Saving Private Ryan" redefined the war movie genre, but when you get right down to it, large elements of "Saving Private Ryan" are just as cliche and by the book as any war movie that John Wayne made. The soldiers walk around, chit chatting on patrol. The soldiers NEVER have their helmets fastened. Neither of these may seem like gross oversights, but to a former Marine, the prospect of walking around Germany talking loudly about your "mission," while your helmet straps dangle loosely from the fastener was too much to take.

Need more examples of cliche moments that have been done before? I know that WWII brought people together from all over the country, but the Southerners in "SPR" were *really* Southern and the New Yorkers were *really* New Yorkers. Anytime you have a movie where your sharpshooter is a Bible quoting Southern gent, while the rest of the grunts were machismo spewing Yanks, you know the movie is slightly less than subtle.

There are other elements of "Saving Private Ryan" that get to me. One of the middling factors with the movie was its casting. When you put Tom Hanks in the lead role of a war movie, you cease to see the character that he's portraying, and you start to see Forrest Gump running around the battle field. When you put Ted Danson into a war movie, if even for a minute or two, the character he's playing automatically disappears and what you're left with is wondering why Sam Malone's dressed up like GI Joe.

My biggest complaint with the movie is that it's too "Spielberg." Don't get me wrong, I'm about as big a Spielberg fan as they come, but his "serious" movies have been largely hit (Munich, Schindler's List) and miss (Saving Private Ryan, Amistad). Maybe it's too harsh to say that "Saving Private Ryan" is a "miss," but in my estimation, it ranks below "The Thin Red Line," "Platoon," "Full Metal Jacket," and "Flags of Our Fathers" when it comes to what I'm looking for out of a war movie.

I'm going to write a full-on review of "Flags of Our Fathers" very soon (probably tomorrow), but I just wanted to clear up a few things about "Saving Private Ryan."

my two cents for this Wednesday