Saving Private Ryan film review

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SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

Steven Spielberg's astonishing recreation of World War II, specifically the D-Day landings on Omaha beach, could well be his most powerful movie yet.

Among a uniformly excellent ensemble which includes Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns and Matt Damon, Tom Hanks delivers a career best performance as an army captain charged with taking his squad behind enemy lines to retrieve the only surviving Ryan of four brothers.

The most gruelling, brutally realistic on-screen realisation of war yet fills out a positively shell-shocking opening 25 minutes, which rightly netted a swathe of technical awards on Oscar night.

Criticisms that the search for Ryan removes the film into Boys' Own Adventure territory are churlish, because this is what Spielberg does so well. It's not a documentary, because even they allow a form of detachment, whereas gradual empathy with Miller's squad makes the horrible futility of Europe's worst hour more personal, more affecting.

And while some of the scale will inevitably be lost (however wide your telly) in video format and will mean Shakespeare In Love has an easier conversion to the small screen, another look at this superbly crafted film will make Shakespeare In Love's capture of the Best Picture Oscar less a shock and more an absolute travesty.