I don't think I can recall any Hollywood film that depicts the atrocities of the D-Day landings as effectively as this does at the start. Indeed, watching it you wonder just how any of the Allied soldiers managed to ever survive the water let alone fight their way up a beach crowded with tank traps, mines and barbed wire - all whilst under constant machine gun fire. Steven Spielberg leaves very little to our imagination and bodies drop left, right and centre with an authenticity that John Williams scores remarkably poignantly. It's during this seemingly impossible assault that we are introduced to "Miller" (a career-best from Tom Hanks) and his squad who are tasked with taking out one of the heavily defended pill boxes. Meantime, the US Chief of Staff - General George Marshall is informed that one particular lady is about to get three telegrams in one day telling her that her sons have died. There is a fourth - "James" - and the reward for "Miller" and what's left of his group is to find this man and get him home to safety. What's also illustrated quite succinctly here is that despite the most meticulous of planning, nobody really has much of a clue who had landed where, who was alive or dead, and whether or not the master plan was working or not! This makes the new task even more difficult as the men, along with the dragooned interpreter "Upham" (Jeremy Davis) set of in search of a man they don't know with feelings that can only be described as "mixed" about the legitimacy of their mission. What now ensues is a potent story of war and of how the pressures and horrors of constant fear and weariness can corrupt the the most decent of souls. We see these men - decent men - turn into things they would never have thought themselves capable of becoming and the acting really rams that home in a characterful and visceral fashion. Brutality and savagery are not limited to the Nazis and again these images are presented to us with an honesty rather from a rose-tinted good v evil viewpoint and the dialogue has a ripeness and vivacity that rings true, too. It's not devoid of some black humour as we progress through war-torn France before a denouement that combines edge-of-the-seat drama with splendid cinematography and all of the ghastliness of conflict. The men valued each other as much as anything else, their inter-reliance and their determination to get the job done - even if they didn't really know why - is a testament to the attitudes that prevailed throughout the real fighting in Europe during WWII and this dramatisation is stunning. Big screen if you can - but it's really a must watch.