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Clusterf@*k to Berlin: the Class of '44

PACKAGE:  
Saving Private Ryan is delivered in a standard Blu-ray 2-disc box with a card sleeve. It’s a fairly run of the mill cover design with no exciting revelations. Disc one contains the feature, and disc two houses the extras.

This Blu-ray comes with a healthy crop of extras providing a detailed insight into the story behind the making of the film, as well as the historical context and much more besides. This includes a couple of behind-the-scenes docs, with one dedicated to the Omaha Beach opening section alone. The most disappointing thing about these extras is that the vast majority are SD and some are presented in 4:3. Once again we have the issue of a Blu-ray release not really containing much more than its most recent DVD predecessor. The only exceptions to this are the HD trailers.

I’ve always found trailers ot be a bit of a pointless, lip-service extra on Blu-ray. I mean, when seriously are you going to watch them? Just before you watch the feature to get you all excited? Afterwards to remind you of the good times you just had? A disappointment.

BIAS:
Spielberg’s a funny old sausage. He’s responsible for some of the greatest movies ever made, there’s no doubt about that. Jaws, Close Encounters, the Indiana Jones series – they’re definitive pieces of modern movie history, and bloody enjoyable to watch, too. But on the other hand he’s also peddled some stomach-churning schmaltz, the eyeball-rottingly saccharine Hook being the best example.

I once saw an interview with Spielberg in which he was talking about his kids and how he tells them he’s a

“Movie maker! I make movies!”

His attitude during that interview summed up for me how I sometimes feel about his work. It’s very fashionable to say he’s “too commercial” and I don’t necessarily think that’s a valid criticism seeing as all theatrically released feature films are a commercial venture, but there’s an annoying lack of cynicism, a fairy-dust, ‘magic of the movies’ silliness that sometime creeps into his films that makes me feel a bit odd.

Thankfully, despite a slight wobble involving a weeping octogenarian blubbering to his impossibly attractive family about whether or not he’s lived a “good life” at either end of the movie, in Saving Private Ryan we get Spielberg the ‘film-maker’ rather than Spielberg the ‘movie-maker’. It’s a brilliant, visceral, disturbing portrayal of human conflict with real heart and minimal Hollywood schmaltz – except for when the old guy gets his whine on.

Verdict:  AVOID / CONSIDER / RENT / BUY / TREASURE