Saving Private Ryan – Spielberg is the best!

(Find this entry in my blog)

Nothing beats a grumpy gray day/night but watching one of the finest films ever – Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998). Tonight is study night but as I had a shit! day and page 89 of my book hasn’t moved in the last 10 minutes, might as well make use of my precious time by savouring a Spielberg epic.

Released in ’98, SPR stars Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, amongst others. Tom Sizemore was my biggest crush in this cast – his character Sargeant Mike Horvath was the best. Hovart was a no nonsense hardball type but was fiercely loyal to his Captain. Sizemore’s performance here was solid – he should have been nominated. (See Sizemore in Pearl Harbour and Black Hawk Down.)

The first half hour of the film was gripping and just elicited strong emotions I can’t even begin to describe. The Omaha Beach invasion – was not just bloody, it was awfully devastating. Having seen the movie thrice now, still I felt that my soul was drained in the first 30 minutes of this film. But then I went on and kept watching – just to get to know each of the characters better.

This letter started it all – the search for Private Ryan. His 3 brothers were dead and Mrs Ryan received the telegram at once. Gen. George Marshall took this letter from his file and ordered the men to find Private Ryan, the last remaining son of Mrs Ryan.

“I have here a very old letter, written to a Mrs. Bixby in Boston. “Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln.”

You read that and you just go and find the last Ryan.

Eight guys went on to save a single guy, Private James Francis Ryan. The whole movie showed how tight this brotherhood was with touches of idiosyncratic personalities and sarcastic cynics. The almost three-hour movie presented each character in raw and very engaging plot. I cry each time a character is killed. Tragic. War is indeed nothing but vicious!!! But sad to say – we never learn… watch BBC worldwide (even just the weekend edition) then you see the modern day ‘Normandy’.

The film went on to be nominated for 11 Oscars and Steven Spielberg won his second Oscars for this film for best director. Kudos to Spielberg!!! It lost the best movie title, but went on to gross millions of dollars in the box office. Further than that, it shaped people’s views on war and the human race. To Spielberg, may he continue to produce more great epic films.

Which reminds me – I must go and see ‘The Hurt Locker’ – winner of 2010 Academy Award for Best Picture (and Kathryn Bigelow winning the Best Director). The movie is about the 2008 Irag war. You would want to see this only to feel the emotion in the opening quote: from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a best-selling 2002 book by New York Times war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges:

“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”

Syriana – Highly recommended movie

Last night I watched George Clooney’s movie Syriana on Channel 9. (I’m a Channel 7 fan though but this is tennis season and I’m no fan of tennis.) The movie is excellent – only for the fact that it deals with serious ramifications of world politics. It is loosely adapted from Robert Baer’s See No Evil. The movie is about the petroleum industry and how the mighty US has, once again, attempted to control world politics. The ramifications of this of course affect all facets – including economic, legal, and most importantly social. After I’ve watched it – I said to PG ‘I hate corporations!’ and he reminded me that I work for one. So I qualified that saying ‘multinational corporations’; the company I work only operates nationally.

Back to the movie – the story parallel that of Bush, Sr (actually the Bush’s clan) and the former US VP Dick Cheney and their ‘alleged’ involvement over the war in Afghanistan (the movie highlighted the Emir in Beirut in Lebanon). It is not right to generalise but what I take from the movie was that there will always be the bad and the good in every race in the world. The greedy business Americans who just want to protect their wealth and status and so will plot strategies to keep that – at all cost! (“Americans love to drill holes in other people’s countries” – Prince Nasir Al-Subaai said in the movie.) However, there are also those who uphold the universal right to freedom and humanity and they are the normal, hard working offshore Americans and die as ‘casualties’ of world politics. The movie showed lavish lifestyles of the Arab – they are indeed loaded. In the movie, it showed two brothers who are significantly different in outlook – I quite like the good Arab of course. I liked it and when he said to Bryan (Matt Damon), the energy analyst, that he wants to re-build his country with the right foundations… that of free enterprise, liberate women…

But what has strucked me most is the rant that Danny Dalton (a Washington attorney) had to another attorney when he said:

Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale thinks he’s gonna run this up the flagpole? Make a name for himself? Maybe get elected some two-bit congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here? No, I tell you. No, sir! Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That’s Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.

 With that on regulation – so true and of course I know, I work in that area!!!