By showing a localized company and it's landing, Speilberg has the chance to deal in specifics rather than generalities. Picking an US company is for the memories his father instilled in him and not some scheme to eliminate the Brits.

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Ohh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts, and plagues and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing...well I say "Hard Cheese"!
~C. Montgomery Burns

Or a movie set in any big city, with an all-black cast (Friday).

Sheesh, the negativity.
Personally, I think you're offended because you want to be.

I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

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Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson

To quote the great Monty Python, let's not argue about who killed who. Rather let's understand that the scope of SPR is limited.

Whereas TRL is a meditation on war. A deeply philosophical movie which examines the conflict within mankind and wonders if it is inherent. Terrence Malick uses nature itself to ask the question and it makes for an interesting non-answer.

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Ohh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts, and plagues and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing...well I say "Hard Cheese"!
~C. Montgomery Burns

Jay: Yes, but then, what was the POINT of SPR? What was Spielberg trying to tell us? War is hell? No shit! I've known that for years! Everyone who has seen Platoon has known that. Go back further! All Quite on the Western Front! Let's just remake that. If Spielberg wanted to make a "shoot-em-up action adventure romp" then he succeeded. That's why I say it is a good war movie. But it's not a good movie. It has, to again quote Chris Cornell, nothing to say.

That's why I liked TTRL, in part. It examined the metaphysical nature of war, more or less. Sure, it told us war is hell. But it never needed to be so obvious. It was more about nature than war itself. Man vs nature, man in nature, man as nature.

Here is a good example of TTRL's superiority over SPR. In the latter, the German soldier they capture and are going to kill is released. He then comes back to be the guy who kills Yanks at Remagen. Thus, our hero who earlier had let him guy smites the evil German! DIE DIE DIE MY DARLING! Germans are evil!!! Okay, so he never shouted that, but... why not? It made GREAT drama, but lousy for the point of the movie. Contrast that with TTRL, which presented the Japanese as being, essentially, the same as the Americans. What makes this all the more frustrating is SPR came close at times. Remember the scene on D-Day where the Yanks executed the German prisoners? That was a step in the right direction. But that was it. A step, one that was not appropriately followed up. No one ever really stopped to ask the question "How much worse are they than we? Wouldn't we be doing the same thing as the Germans if we were on the other side?"

Another problem was the view of the military high command. Aside from Monty, they were supposedly geniuses. Look at George Marshall, presented as this wonderful sagely, carely, fatherly figure who, in the end, was right. How can you have an anti-war film which is pro-establishment? What he's essentially telling us is "war is hell, but the people who run it are good people" which is... well, it's not surprising considering the sort of limp liberalism Spielberg promotes. Let me provide a quote from Spielberg

Of course every war movie, good or bad, is an antiwar movie. Saving Private Ryan will always be that, but I took a very personal approach in telling this particular war story. The film is based on a number of true stories from the second world war and even from the Civil War about brothers who have died in combat.... What first attracted me to the story was its obvious human interest. This was a mission of mercy, not the charge up San Juan Hill. At its core, it is also a morality play. I was intrigued with what makes any of these working-class guys heroes. I think when we fight, war is no longer about a greater good but becomes intensely personal. Kids in combat are simply fighting to survive, fighting to save the guys next to them.... When they became heroes it wasn't because they wanted to be like John Wayne, it was because they were
not thinking at all. They were acting instinctively, from the gut. These dogfaces who freed the world were a bunch of decent guys. It's their story that now should be told.

Could we get any more pro-establishment? This man is claiming to make an anti-war film, but essentially tells us that the elite make decisions to "free the world" and they send the unthinking grunts (openly said by him to be the proletariat) off to do the fighting. They don't think about what's going on, they only try to survive. Could this have been any more pleasing to the government? No wonder Steve gets to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom! Churning out more parts of the Why We Fight series has to please the Pentagon.

In this respect, we can contrast it to TTRL, which was truly anti-war in that it was anti-military. Like the kid who constantly deserts. Or, Captain Staros, the untrained grunt who makes the call on his own, and comes in contrast with the Lt Colonel. That's even further exploded as the latter is himself acting like such a prick because of his need to get a promotion and his conflict with the command.

Another contrast is in how the "war as hell" idea is presented. In TTRL, it is never as glorified as in SPR. In SPR, we have the patriotic music, the death of our hero at the end while saving his men, the re-assuring epilogue where we realize all is right and it was worth it. TTRL is devoid of that. Death is far more cruel and meaningless. We have no "well, it was all worth it" speech. Instead, we have the the next captain preparing his men for what's going to be going on (Guadalcanal is never taken in the film).

As a straight ahead piece of entertainment, I would prefer SPR. TTRL is very poorly paced, and some of the dialogue (particularly the voiceovers) are tilted. But movies are not entertainment, they're art. That's why, to me, TTRL is far superior. The Thin Red Line is an All Quite on the Western Front for the modern day. Saving Private Ryan is a Sands of Iwo Jima for the modern day.

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"I'm so happy cause today I found my friends. They're in my head." - Kurt Cobain
Lithium, Nirvana

Er. why? Historically, things like that DO happen. Frequently. One guy makes a decision not to kill someone, who later beats up on his side. George Washington is an example. A Brit had him in his sights early on during the revolution, but didn't shoot him. And the new US won a war. Would you be upset if they showed that fact in a movie about the Revolutionary War?

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Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson

In your movie, the point that scene should express is:

Show no mercy, people are scum.

Now, that may work for you. But it doesn't for me. Particularly since the further thought is, well, the Germans did it. "We showed mercy to the enemy, the enemy payed us back with bullets." Now, sure, that's great when you consider we're bombing the hell out of the Iraqis and Serbs. But that's why when a director becomes more concerned with getting an invitation to the White House than making art, he should retire.

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"I'm so happy cause today I found my friends. They're in my head." - Kurt Cobain
Lithium, Nirvana

That is an anti-war movie. Not "Hey, wasn't that bloody?"

However, the film is ultimately about redemption. Rather than hold the cynical view of the mission, Miller looks at the task at hand as a way to redeem not only himself but those around him. For in war, some sort of redemption is necessary for the things done, even in the name of freedom.

Miller knows that and wonders about what he has become in juxtaposition to his past rather idyllic life. In war no one comes away clean. No matter which side you are on. That is seen clearly in the scenes showing the Americans shooting unarmed German soldats.

Miller address this redemption both during the Steamboat Willie scene and during the transending scene in the movie, in the church at night. The squad talks about innocents killed, about the fear at what they are becoming, and the death that may lay ahead.

But back to motivation. What makes a man walk into an area where men are waiting to kill him? SPR addresses motivation better than any other film that I can think of. I would say The Red Badge of Courage, but the filmed versions never quite equaled the book in regard to Henry's transending fear to stan in front of people trying to kill him.

As to realism, I think SPR goes beyond the war is hell gig. Violence in movies can serve a purpose. War can never truley be mirrored on the movie screen, but films like SPR do a remarkable job of it. Generations need to be reminded of how horrifying war is and rather than throwing kids in front of guns, film can be a way to do that. The other film that comes to mind the matches the level of realism appraoched by SPR is Das Boot (1981) (The Boat).

In a very real way SPR is a direct answer to the films of the Reagan 80's (Rambo and the Missing in Action flicks) where millions of bullets were sprayed across the screen and only the evil Russian or Vietnamese stereotypes get killed. There are no real consequences to the violence. The antithesis to the characters in SPR and Das Boot are Chuck Norris' Braddock and Sylvester Stallone's Rambo were represent the Reagan era's wanting to win the Vietnam war on-screen.

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Ohh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts, and plagues and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing...well I say "Hard Cheese"!
~C. Montgomery Burns

For a good movie about why men fight, I think one need look no further than Platoon. Charlie Sheen's character (whose name escapes me) goes over to Nam for a reason. I may have forgotten it, but did we even have a discussion of the war? Keep in mind, these men were all suitably brainwashed prior. Frank Capra, anyone? Now, granted, the American fighting man was inferior to the Russian fighting man, who used to shout "For Stalin and Motherland!" while going into battle. But I still cannot believe that all those guys were fighting for was to stay alive. What's more frustrating is that the movie hints at that (revenge, the Jew thing for the Jew, etc) but never actually explores it. It's far too concerned with the matter of Saving Private Ryan then why they're there in the first place.