"Saving Private Ryan" is set in World War II in Normandy. Private Ryan is one of four brothers fighting the war. When three of the Ryans are killed within a week of each other, the War Office decides to send the fourth Ryan home to his mother. But first they have to locate the lad, and all they know is that he’s somewhere in France. So the nucleus of this movie, as the title suggests, concerns finding and then saving the youngest Ryan. But this heartwarming story is wrapped in a double pair of bookends. The first pair of bookends is deliberately deceitful, while the second pair is just as emphatically sensational.

Eight soldiers are sent on the mission to rescue Private Ryan, lead by Tom Hanks, as Captain John Harris. Harris is the protagonist of the film and a man of great heroism and humanity. When we first meet him, Harris leads his troops through a bloody massacre on Omaha beach in Normandy. During 26 minutes of gratuitous violence we see men shot and blown apart in an arduous bloodbath. And to counterbalance this carnage is a parallel scene toward the conclusion of the film, as exciting and adventure packed as any audience can stand.

So, sure, "Saving Private Ryan" might be a well told and engaging story, but I have two major problems with this film. First: war is hell, even before Spielberg brought these grueling images in front of our face. The late Phil Hartman once joked about a weight loss program where he would constantly repeat "Eat less, exercise more; Eat less, exercise more." In the same vein, surely we understand that "War is hell, people die," without having to experience it larger than life. Worse, however, is the suggestion that this film alone shows the reality of war. Does Spielberg have to authenticate every experience before it can be considered valid?

Second, the slant of this movie follows the traditional format of all those WWII pictures that were actually under the control of the War Office. The enemy is completely dehumanized. For the most part we only ever experience the foe as a faceless monster lurking behind a machine gun. When one adversary is finally isolated from the others, we find that he is a deceitful, mean man. I was appalled to hear people in the cinema around me actually call out "kill him" whenever the allies came face to face with the opposition.

Spielberg has spent so much of his career sensitively bringing us the story of the "other" that this film seems curiously out of character. Perhaps his goal with this film is to heighten the reality by making the audience hate the enemy. But it feels as if he decided to pull on his white hat to play cowboy, with Tom Hanks as his horse.