SOURCE: Alleva, Richard. “A Brutal Masterpiece.” Commonweal 125, no. 15 (11 September 1998): 29-30.

In the following review, Alleva commends Saving Private Ryan as an impressive cinematic accomplishment.

If you've read anything at all about Saving Private Ryan, you've read about its violence. Yes, it is appalling. But most screen violence nowadays is appalling, and if Steven Spielberg's depiction of the carnage of Omaha Beach and of subsequent battles and skirmishes during the week following D-Day offered nothing more than shock through verisimilitude, there would be little reason to discuss it. After all, do we really need to be told once again that war is hell? Haven't hundreds of movies from The Big Parade to Platoon all told us the same thing by administering large or small doses of fabricated battlefield horror? What could Spielberg do except spend a few million more, ratchet up the special effects, set off a bigger bang...