There is nothing unreal about Saving Private Ryan. Personally, I have not been in a war, but, if it's anything even remotely close to what Steven Spielberg depicted in his new masterpiece, then I don't want any part of it. Every sequence is so incredibly realistic, so superbly graphic, so startlingly unpleasant, words cannot describe it. Many times throughout the movie did I actually shift and tell myself that this was a 1998 movie, not a CNN Live broadcast of a war. Silent I was, watching Saving Private Ryan, as the horrors of war were brought to life once more as they had never been done before. Steven Spielberg took no expense in over-dramatization or bizarre camera effects... No, it depicted everything vastly different then what I've seen before. Handheld cameras in the middle of the action, deafening silence that showed what the soldiers must have felt when they watched their friends die, and grotesquely bloody, saddening scenes absorb you into the picture itself. Saving Private Ryan is not one of the best movies ever. It is the best movie ever.

Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.