Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this is Steven Spielberg's most violent film, especially in the opening 25-minute D-Day invasion massacres. There's no sugar-coating, no "cartoon violence," no nameless, inconsequential casualties like LucasFilm Imperial Stormtroopers. This is unrestrained, ugly, and dirty combat, meant to make the viewer appreciate the monstrous human cost and tragic sacrifice of the Allied beachhead -- a price mostly paid by young men. Stunned, vengeful U.S. soldiers are seen committing what would be considered atrocities (shooting surrendering Germans, as well as innocent non-Germans who can't speak English). Even though characters are religious -- one prays fervently before killing with his sniper skills -- everyone swears a lot, too. Some "special editions" carry supplementary documentary material, including clips of Steven Spielberg's own 8mm war movies he made as a kid.
Families can talk about the D-Day invasion, and especially the troop makeup of WWII -- a lot of fighting and dying was done by soldiers who were hardly more than boys. The behavior of characters under fire includes cowardice and vicious homicide, unleashed even at surrendering enemy. Do you think those man can be excused for such a breakdown of discipline? What about soldiers in the field today? Was the mission to save Ryan worth the risk after all? What other war movies and documentaries have you seen? Do they seem true to life? How about the coverage you see in the news? Is it balanced? How would you be able to tell?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN opens with a harrowing, blood-soaked depiction of the WWII Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Countless young men die as zinging bullets and mortar fire cut them down and turn the ocean itself red. It's not exploitation, but rather a master filmmaker's true-life recreation of one of the bloodiest battles in human history, to make one appreciate the bravery and the loss. Star director Steven Spielberg's own dad was a WWII veteran. Here Spielberg tries to show the viewer, after decades of restrained and bloodless Hollywood-backlot war movies, propaganda flag-wavers, and even fluffy battlefield musicals like White Christmas, that war is a terrible thing. Even the "good war" to smash the undeniable Axis of Evil that was Germany and Japan.
Only after the smoke clears from the worst of D-Day do we meet the characters. Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks) commands an eight-man platoon who gets an order to go deep into a dangerous parachute drop zone in the French countryside, swarming with German patrols, sniper nests, and counter-attack forces, and seek a low-ranking soldier named James Ryan.
Ryan was one of several brothers who went to war, and all the others are now dead. The U.S. high command has decided that the Ryan family has suffered enough, and that their remaining son should be brought home safely. But even though this is a mission of "mercy," it's going to cause the Americans even more danger and death, with no perceptible strategic goal. A prologue and epilogue are set in a present-day cemetery -- with acres and acres of graves to mark the dead. And it pretty much asks the viewer what the soldiers ask themselves: if rescuing one unknown man was worth all this carnage.
Expecting younger kids to sit through the horror at the beginning is too much, but the movie isn't all surface gore and sensation. It raises very complex issues of morality and ethics under fire. And often the circumstances are literally under fire, where there's no time for Miller and his squabbling men to think over life and death matters or debate how to do the right thing. Indeed the most well educated and thoughtful American freezes up and has a breakdown in the thick of the fighting.
Spielberg sought the input of war historians and survivors to make Saving Private Ryan as authentic as possible, and a viewing of it might be a good lead-in for your household to take in the epic Ken Burns documentary mini-series The War, the classic World at War, or Why We Fight multi-volume documentaries, or the cable miniseries Band of Brothers that Tom Hanks produced and co-directed. Spielberg made an earlier movie about the British experience of WWII in the Pacific, the more poetic and dreamlike, PG-rated Empire of the Sun.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentDirty jokes and salty stories cracked by members of the platoon. |
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ViolenceGraphic, savage battlefield violence, as men are blown up, shot, and dismembered by artillery fire, and bayoneted, beaten, and stabbed in hand-to-hand fighting. Unsparing death comes to sympathetic characters as well as ones we hardly know. |
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LanguageLots of F- and S-words, "asshole," God's name in vain (or prayed to before killing), and the profane military acronym F.U.B.A.R. is eventually explained. |
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Social BehaviorCapt. Miller is here a paragon of military discipline and fairness, though he too weeps when a friend is killed. He explains in a key moment that in peacetime life he's a schoolteacher, not a career soldier. Even though they bristle at their mission, the men carry out the assignment, at great personal risk. One shows mercy to a German and comes to grievously regret it. Others shoot defenseless and surrendering enemy without thinking twice. Though the platoon is of mixed backgrounds (Jewish, Christian, Italian-American, Appalachian), all are white, which accurately reflects the racially segregated U.S. forces at the time. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSocial drinking, smoking. |
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