SOURCE: Caldwell, Christopher. “Spielberg at War.” Commentary 106, no. 4 (October 1998): 48-51.

In the following review, Caldwell explores the varied critical reaction to Saving Private Ryan, noting that film scholars have been unable to decide if the film offers a positive or negative perspective on World War II.

There is little disagreement that Steven Spielberg's smash hit, Saving Private Ryan, which opened July 24, is a powerful and richly textured account of war. The story it tells, of a small unit hunting for a lost paratrooper in Nazi-occupied Normandy, has won unstinting praise for its simplicity and evocativeness, and the film's brilliantly realistic depiction of the D-Day invasion of Europe is by general consensus without parallel in movie history. Jay Carr of the Boston Globe called Saving Private Ryan “the war movie to end all war movies.” To Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post, it is “simply the greatest war movie...