Saving Private Ryan

With this Oscar-winning attempt to reshape the past through fiction, Steven Spielberg comes closer than ever before to depicting historical truth. The action opens brutally with a gut-wrenching re-creation of the Second World War D-Day landing on Omaha beach. Veterans of the campaign are divided on the authenticity of some of the more spectacularly gory injuries, but most agree that Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski succeeded in capturing the terrifying and bewildering chaos of the encounter. Yet, away from the fighting, the film occasionally lapses into combat-picture cliché, with too many members of Tom Hanks's unit recalling stereotypical soldiers from morale-boosting movies made during the war itself. But, then, this is less about the conflict and its concerns than it is about the war films that Spielberg grew up watching. Ultimately, it lacks the resonance of such classics as All Quiet on the Western Front, but (apart from its corny bookend sequences) this is still well-meaning, strongly acted and slickly mounted, and ranks among the director's very best films.