WOW! In the end that's really all I need to say. For me, this movie will undoubtedly go down in history as the best war movie ever made, and one can only wonder what Steven Spielberg will come up with next. But that's the future, what of the past.

Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski tackled the imagery for Saving Private Ryan with old newsreels in mind. Most of the much-talked-about opening battle sequence was shot using hand held cameras. This makes for a very jerky, almost amateur effect which works brilliantly to add an air of authenticity to the battle. It looks, as it is meant to, that the audience is watching the real landing at Omaha Beach covered by a newsreel photographer on the day. The film was also put through an extra process to remove up to 60 percent of its colour, giving it an added air of antiquity that heightens the sense of period realism.

And of course the realistic special effects top it all off. There were one or two scenes where I was beginning to think, if this gets any worse I may just toss a cookie or two. Not having ever seen a human body torn apart by bullets or shrapnel, I can only say that Spielberg captured those sequences exactly as I would have imagined them. And of course we have the word of those who were actually there on June 6, 1944, and subsequently saw the movie.

Do not let the anticipation of blood and carnage dissuade you from going to the cinema for this movie, nor equally don't watch it for a perverted thrill. This is a work of art which portrays war in all its futile glory.

As for the story itself. To be honest I thought it was superfluous. That is to say Speilberg could have simply re-made any one of 10 dozen war-movies we have seen over the last 40 years and the film would have been just as brilliant. The story, to my mind, was just a vehicle to carry the war footage. And it's the war footage that shoots Saving Private Ryan to the esteemed position of the best movie I have ever seen. That's simply how I rate it.

I have never before gone back to see a movie twice at the cinema, but believe me, by the time you read this I will have seen it again and again.