Saving Private Ryan is a good film. I had never seen it before and I kinda felt like people who say that it’s their favourite film were dull. It felt like a plain, safe choice. In fairness, it is very good.

The opening scene is the bit that everyone talks about. It is brutal and a little upsetting when you think about the fact that it’s based on what actually happened. I think it was what I’d expected. It has been hyped up and I think I was prepared for it. What is impressive is there are probably at least three other equally powerful scenes. I would say the scene with the sniper in the tower when they meet the French family, the aftermath of charging the machine gun at the radar tower and the hand to hand/ knife fight towards the end are way up there in terms of well written and constructed scenes.

It’s a very solid film all the way through. The current day elements could have been edited out and it probably would have improved the film, and conceptually, I feel like films about war are always gross. I had a read online about the film and people talk about the portrayal of WWII as the “good war”. Watching these things, it’s hard not to think about them as propaganda films. The idea of dying for your country in a post-9/11 world seems strange when we’ve seen so clearly how wars are fought for businesses rather than any noble causes.