I'm not even bothering with a critical look at this film; it's been discussed ad infinitum since its release 14 years ago. Here are strictly my own thoughts, formed at 2:30 in the morning.

This has been a movie monkey on my back since 1998 and it feels kind of good to finally seen it. First off: yes, the action sequences were all captivating, sufficiently graphic and blah, blah, blah. Maybe it's because, as a history major, I was already familiar with the gruesome nature of D-Day and maybe it's because I'm just jaded but I wasn't really fazed by what I saw in Saving Private Ryan. In fact, at one point, I had the presence of mind to realize I wasn't fazed.

That led me to question: had I been taken out of the movie by something, or had I simply never really gotten into it? I don't know. It occurred to me that this is another film that could only have been made in the Clinton 90s, when Hollywood was free to explore higher ideals. In 1998, we could accept the mission to rescue Private Ryan as a sort of exploration of the value of the famed Bixby letter of Lincoln's. What would that kind of situation have looked like in our darkest hour?

Made today, though, I suspect many viewers would become insulted and hostile. "Now what's so damn special about that family that they would send my kid on this mission? Don't be risking my kid just because they've had some bad luck!" Who could blame anyone with such a reaction? Soldiers are selfless; families are protective.

Where Saving Private Ryan worked best for me was in its dry sense of humor. As a Southerner, I have often been forced to clarify for others that just because we make jokes about a grim situation doesn't mean we don't fully understand or respect the matter at hand. I don't even think it's quite accurate to call it a self defense mechanism, because that suggests we can't handle serious situations without humor. I have instead come to believe it's merely how we process things. Just as toddlers explore things by testing how they feel and taste, we process things by testing how we can joke about them. I am certain that writer Robert Rodat is a Southerner, or at the very least was heavily influenced in his life by people with strong Southern heritage.

Unfortunately for me, where Saving Private Ryan doesn't work is the bulk of its actual narrative. There just weren't any surprises for me. It all felt too obvious to me what was going to happen, when and even why. No one asked me, but I think I would have clipped the modern-day bookends of the film. All we're left with is knowing that Private Ryan grew to be an old man whose wife thought it silly he would need to be told he was a good man. I wonder if that was tacked on because of Titanic's use of the same structure? Regardless, it added nothing to the film except arguably the symbolic value of reassuring us that the Greatest Generation were decent folks.

Edit to Add, 29 August 2012
Apparently, I never actually added this to my Flickchart. Since I wrote this review, I've taken to including a coda showcasing how a film enters my Flickchart. This is kind of an unusual situation since I apparently went two months without even realizing I never added it!

How It Entered My Flickchart
Saving Private Ryan < Forrest Gump
Saving Private Ryan > The Underground World
Saving Private Ryan > The Crow
Saving Private Ryan < The Money Pit
Saving Private Ryan > Showdown
Saving Private Ryan < Captain America (1990)
Saving Private Ryan > Cutlass
Saving Private Ryan < House of Dracula
Saving Private Ryan > Gulliver's Travels (1996 TV)
Saving Private Ryan > The X-Files
Saving Private Ryan < House of Dracula

Saving Private Ryan entered my Flickchart at #819/1405