SOURCE: Jenkins, Russell. “Spielberg's Soldiers.” National Review 50, no. 16 (1 September 1998): 48-9.

In the following review, Jenkins investigates Spielberg's thematic intentions with Saving Private Ryan, perceiving the film to be “neither anti-war nor pro-war.”

Steven Spielberg's World War II movie, Saving Private Ryan, has come under fire from conservatives, including John Podhoretz in The Weekly Standard and Richard Grenier in the Washington Times. Correctly, Podhoretz and Grenier argue that Spielberg's failure to explain at any point in the film what the war was about can be read as a condemnation of war-making, even in the case of this most just and necessary of wars. It can be read that way. But should it?

When it comes to the history of that war, polls reveal a breathtaking ignorance on the part of the American public. In a recent Roper poll only 57 per cent of respondents knew that the war occurred in...