In the history of cinema, only a handful of pictures deserve the status of "life-changing." This, of course, will necessarily reflect individual experiences and opinions; but few movies in our time have had the univeral impact of Steven Spielberg's masterful WWII drama Saving Private Ryan.

Based on the real-life story of Sgt. Frederick Niland, the film follows a group of eight troops who are commanded to inflitrate enemy lines to find a private, James Ryan, whose three brothers have been killed in combat. Moved by the plight of the boys' mother, the Army commissions Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) to lead these men to locate the private and bring him back home. Nearly all the men are bewildered by the decision to spare manpower to save just one, and the film follows Captain Miller and the troops' efforts to perform their mission valiantly.

The comparisons of this movie to Spielberg's "official" masterpiece, Schindler's List, are exhaustive, but they are nevertheless apt. Spielberg's frankly amazing ability to meld heartfelt storytelling with unadulterated realism was the key element to the Holocaust drama, and it remains so for Saving Private Ryan.

Of course, the most famous (and many cases, infamous) sequence in the movie is the opening reeanctment of the D-Day invasion. The scene has gone down in filmdom as one of the most intensely graphic sequences in film history, and the roughly thirty minute battle has come to define the film, and deservedly so. The fight for Omaha Beach is indeed incredibly violent, and stomach wrenchingly prolonged. It has proven to be too much for some viewers. However, just like he did with Schindler's List, Spielberg finds the vein between overbearing and unrealistic: graphic, but not oppressive.

The key element to that scene, as well as much of Saving Private Ryan, is Janusz Kaminski's cinematography. The grainy, hand-held, free-form movement of motion is superbly maniupulated to bring maximum intensity to the battles of the movie. Kaminski's work, which captured the 1998 Oscar, has also become widely imitated (see Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down).

Tom Hanks as Captain Miller is the key performance throughtout the film. Hanks brings just the right amount of gallantry and humanity to the tortured Captain, always struggling with the often conflicting values of duty and reason. Part of the strength of Hanks's performance is the juxtaposing of Miller in different situations: on Omaha Beach, Miller is stoically determined, seemingly undisturbed by the carnage, and totally focused on the mission. Afterwards, in the quietness of his own mind, Miller keeps records of how many men have died under him (in one poweful scene, Miller says that the lives that must have been saved by his mens' death is the only rationale for choosing between "the mission and the men"). The rest of the cast (including Matt Damon as Private Ryan and Edward Burns as the frustrated Reiben) is fine, but the entire film hinges (and successfully so) on Hanks.