[PEN-L:344] Re: Re: Saving Private Ryan

["Frances Bolton (PHI)" <fbolton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 29 Jul 1998 JayHecht@xxxxxxx wrote:

> I just read Valis' "review" of Saving Private Ryan.

Can someone please send me Valis' review? I prematurely deleted it.

I saw "Saving Private Benjamin" yesterday. Technically, it was really
impressive. It was, I think, the first war movie I've ever seen, so I have
nothing to compare it to. Louis had posted some comments on the film,
which included a vet calling "Full metal Jacket" a recruiting movie.
During Ryan, I kept asking myself if it could be seen as such, and I think
it can be.

I went to see the film with a friend and I inadvertantly pissed her off
during the climatic scene. Tom Hanks was running, and gunfire and what
have you exploding all around him. I leaned over to her and whispered
"Run, Forrest, run!!" She elbowed me, hard.

People have been relating the war experiences of their fathers, and how
they were affected by them. My father enlisted during Korea. He spent the
three years at Guantanamo and Jamaica, drinking and whoring and running a
black market candy store. I don't think he fired a gun after basic
training. He was also a guard in the stockade--the favorite guard of the
prisoners as he tells the story, and I believe him--he's pretty affable in
a butch NJ blue collar sort of way. He
came out of that war deeply, deeply, opposed to the military, and told me,
when I ws 18, that the one thing that I could do anything, and he would
support me, but if I joined the military, he would disown me.

Frances