“Saving Private Ryan” is big budget war movie made by the gifted director Steven Spielberg (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Jaws”). For the most part, I believe it works well, I was just let down a lot by the final act. It’s a mixture of decent characters and overdone action sequences.

During World War II, a group of soldiers are led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks “Toy Story 2”, “You’ve Got Mail”) as they go behind enemy lines. Their mission is to find a missing paratrooper, named James Ryan (Matt Damon “The Bourne Identity”, “We Bought A Zoo”) after his three brothers are all killed in action.

I think Tom Hanks is really good in this film as Captain Miller. He is the guy responsible for everybody else’s life and as a result, has come up with a way of rationalising causalities. I like the other soldiers in the team too (just not as much as I liked Hanks) as they all showcase the various side effects of being at war. Matt Damon is okay as Private Ryan but that could have honestly been anyone in that role. Sadly, I felt the characters were made a lower priority than the action.

The action scene near the beginning is really gory, really disorientating and just gets the feel of WWII right but all the later action scenes have a very unrealistic feel to them. I felt like I was watching another Michael Bay film such as “Bad Boys” or “Transformers”, which certainly wasn’t a good thing. I like the very first scene of the picture and afterwards, it just never lives up to that greatness. I’m sorry to say but Spielberg seemed to get two-thirds of the way through this picture and then fell into the trap of making another movie where it becomes just about the explosions. That’s when I stopped caring about the characters.