“SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.” Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Robert Rodat. Running time: 170 minutes. Rated R (for intense, extremely graphic sequences of war violence and for language).

At the beginning of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” scores of American soldiers — some vomiting into their helmets, others closing their eyes against the growing thunder of German gunfire — are seen storming Omaha Beach in a battalion of landing-boats.

It is D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the footage is intentionally rough, grainy as a newsreel; the tension on screen — and in the audience — is immediately discomforting, nearly hallucinatory but utterly real.

Spielberg’s camera, shaking as violently as one soldier’s hand, skips from man to man, capturing for an instant the deep fear and dread on each man’s face before slowly bleeding the color from the film — a haunting effect that gives each soldier the gray, premature pallor of a day-old corpse.

With little warning, the gates of the boats fall open, ushering in a hail of German artillery that slams hard into the hearts of men too stunned to move. One by one the men drop in a shocking cascade of flesh. Those who do make it to the water either drown, are eviscerated by bullets or are trampled to death by their peers. Those who somehow reach shore are either blown apart by bombs or burned alive by flame throwers. The action and the carnage is unrelenting in its force as Spielberg hammers away at his soldiers and at his audience.

He is doing what literature cannot do — filling our senses to capacity and pushing hard toward overload. He succeeds, but the effect doesn’t thrill the way lesser war films do — indeed, it humbles. For 24 minutes, the shrieking metallic whiz of bullets fills the theater like a barrage of shrapnel. The men, led by Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks), eventually claim Omaha Beach as their own, but look around them. Look at the red sea lapping against the red shore run dark with blood. Look at the men lying dying, wounded or dead among the burning corpses and mutilated fish.

That this is the most astounding re-enactment of war ever brought to screen is an understatement. Indeed, it is an emotionally demanding masterpiece that is every bit as magnificent, devastating and important as Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List.”

With Omaha Beach secured, Miller and his men are sent on another mission, one that borders on the absurd: They must locate a certain Pvt. James Ryan (Matt Damon), a paratrooper whose three brothers were recently killed in combat. The Army, sensing a possible public-relations ploy that could be instrumental in putting a human face on the war, demands that Ryan be brought home safe.

But at the potential cost of eight men? Apparently so, and here is where Spielberg’s film finds its themes: loyalty, self-sacrifice, brotherhood, death. The men, at once furious and relieved to be leaving battle, go in search of a man who is being pulled from a war they must stay and fight. As Miller puts it, Ryan had “better be worth it. He better go home and cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting light bulb.”

But Ryan, who is found two hours into the film, is merely an ordinary man caught in a nightmare of circumstance. Loyal to his own platoon, he refuses to return, demanding that he stay and fight in a final sequence that not only lifts this film into the high realm of art, but somehow finds us desperately involved.

Disturbing and unforgettable, “Saving Private Ryan” is an homage to those who fought in World War II, and must not be missed. Grade: A

Video of the Week

“U.S. MARSHALS.” Directed by Stuart Baird. Written by John Pogue. Running time: 123 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence and language).

It is with some irony that “U.S. Marshals” was released on video smack in the middle of July, a month that is being touted in newspapers and in magazines as Anti-Boredom Month.

The film, which is a sequel to “The Fugitive,” bores the way a well-meaning aunt bores — you know she is trying her damnedest to entertain, but frankly she is past her prime, her stories are repetitive, and you just don’t care to listen anymore.

In the film, Tommy Lee Jones reprises his role as Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard, who some will remember as the gruff, tough-talking marshal whose sturdy presence forced Harrison Ford to jump from a towering dam. Now, anyone who can get Harrison Ford, of all people, to jump from a dam is worth a second look, but, unfortunately for Jones, that second look happened to be in this movie.

The film, which is a near parallel of its predecessor in plot, is a bumbling distant cousin in execution. In it, Jones is pitted against a new fugitive, the sprightly Wesley Snipes, who runs and jumps with the best of them, but who is curiously lacking in character. You don’t care for him the way you did for Ford in “The Fugitive,” which robs the film of any dramatic tension when Snipes is on the lam. Couple this with lazy direction and lackluster special effects, and you’ll want to call 911. Indeed, “U.S. Marshals” is DOA. Grade: D

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the NEWS.