Saving Private Ryan

TNT RoughCut Andy Jones

Spectacular, wrenching masterpiece that unflinchingly documents the random horror, the grisly spectacle and the ugliness of war.

San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson

The effect is riveting and frightening. You feel you are under siege with the combatants.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A searingly visceral combat picture, Steven Spielberg’s third World War II drama is arguably second to none as a vivid, realistic and bloody portrait of armed conflict.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Steven Spielberg's best war film -- and one of the two or three best movies the director has made.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Searing, heartbreaking, so intense it turns your body into a single tube of clenched muscle, this is simply the greatest war movie ever made, and one of the great American movies.

USA Today Mike Clark

The rawest, most sustained screen portrayal of 20th century combat.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A watershed picture, for both Spielberg and war movies.

Mr. Showbiz Richard T. Jameson

No Hollywood film within recent memory has achieved such richness and originality of texture, such a compelling amalgam of passionate human drama and awesome technique.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

One of the best films ever made in this country, filled with our proudest national virtues, cognizant of our deeply rooted human weaknesses and frighteningly able to evoke emotions.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

An overwhelming experience.

Time Richard Schickel

A war film that, entirely aware of its genre's conventions, transcends them as it transcends the simplistic moralities that inform its predecessors, to take the high, morally haunting ground.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Steven Spielberg's soberly magnificent new war film, the second such pinnacle in a career of magical versatility, has been made in the same spirit of urgent communication. It is the ultimate devastating letter home.

Film.com Ted Fry

In striving to duplicate reality, Spielberg has gone reality one better -- he's playing war, but it's a game no one would ever willingly join in.

Dallas Observer Peter Rainer

He (Spielberg) commemorates the soldiers in that vast Normandy cemetery in the most absolute and honorable way possible.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

An excellent movie, as effective in battle scenes as it is in that of soldiers ruminating on an Edith Piaf song.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A movie of staggering virtuosity and raw lyric power, a masterpiece of terror, chaos, blood, and courage.

New York Post Rod Dreher

A film of such cyclonic visual and emotional power, of such dazzling virtuosity and shattering humanity, that it is difficult to endure, yet alone describe. Savagely beautiful and savagely true, Saving Private Ryan is an excruciating masterpiece.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For those who are willing to brave the movie's shocking and unforgettable images, Saving Private Ryan offers a singular motion picture experience.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This film embodies ideas. After the immediate experience begins to fade, the implications remain and grow.

Slate David Edelstein

What Steven Spielberg has accomplished in Saving Private Ryan is to make violence terrible again.

Film.com Robert Horton

A magnificent piece of movie-making.

Film.com John Hartl

Feels like the first truly honest attempt to deal with the horrors of combat - and the terrible responsibility shared by all survivors.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A bitter, bloody masterpiece with adrenalized emotions and hyper-realized images, this is perhaps as close to battle as any sane human being should ever hope to tread.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The movie's greatest strength lies in phenomenal performances that reach from the leads right down to the smallest supporting roles.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

If Steven Spielberg's emotional intelligence matched his visual genius, his honorably flawed new film might qualify for one of the greatest-ever American WWII movies.

Newsweek David Ansen

Raises Hollywood's depiction of war to a new level.

Film.com Peter Brunette

An exceptionally intense movie whose sheer filmmaking power ultimately transcends all its (many) limitations.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Its relatively minor imperfections seem more glaring when compared to the near flawlessness of the film's lyrical, scorching start.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A startling reminder of exactly how spectacular a director Spielberg can be when he allows himself to be challenged by a subject (in this case World War II) that pushes against his limits.

Salon.com Gary Kamiya

Using the overpowering techniques of modern film, Steven Spielberg has cut through the glory-tinged gauze that shrouds World War II to reveal its brutal reality, creating a phenomenology of violence unsurpassed in the history of cinema.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Steven Spielberg's new film begins as a monumental epic; then it diminishes; and, by its finish, is baffling. [August 24, 1998]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A horror movie based on history, offering some of the most spectacularly brutal, viscerally intense battle scenes ever brought to a Hollywood movie.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The story raises hard moral questions relating to the relative value of human lives and the overwhelming debt that may be felt by those who benefit when others sacrifice. But the movie falls short of excellence because it doesn't so much explore these issues as finesse them in an action-filled climax.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Nothing that suggests an independent vision, unless you count seeing more limbs blown off than usual.