Can it really be twenty years since Saving Private Ryan was released? How time was flown! I remember seeing this film in the Autumn of 1998, and being completely stunned at the images on screen. I had spoken with people who had seen it and I had heard discussions in the media about opening scenes depicting the landings at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944. However, nothing could have prepared me for the scenes of violence as Tom Hank's John Miller disembarked with his men.

Steven Spielberg had created such an orgy of violence that it raised the bar on the level of death and mayhem that a war film could show. I am a huge war movie fan. I love Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse all Vietnam War movies. I also love the classic World War Two films like The Longest Day, Midway, Battle of Britain and Where Eagles Dare.I thought I had seen it all. How wrong I was. We saw bodies on fire, drowning soldiers shot in the water and traumatised men looking for missing limbs. We even have blood splashed on the screen as if we, the audience, were on the beach with a camera. We are that close to the action.

No war film had ever portrayed such bloodshed especially set in World War Two. Spielberg also showed that American soldiers shot unarmed German soldiers when they surrendered something not seen before in a Hollywood film.

Who would have thought that after Jaws, ET, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park and Shindlers List that Spielberg could still surprise us? Saving Private Ryan also saw the return of the World War Two movie having been killed off as a genre since the 1970s. This was the Good War, with no moral confusion or ambiguity like the Vietnam War. This was straight up Good vs Evil.

I have seen SPR many times since 1998, and it still packs a punch. Some scenes even move me to tears like the older Ryan visiting the military cemetery. It is a classic film that has stood the test of time. How it was not awarded with an Oscar for Best Film is still a mystery.