Saving Private Ryan

I feel like I am the last person to have watched it. I understand when it came out it was praised for being very 'life-like' and gory--refer to the opening scene where they storm the beaches of Normandy during D-Day, but having already seen Band of Brothers and The Pacific I was slightly underwhelmed. The plot line was also ever so tenuous and tried to cast all the major players as heroic in their own way, whereas The Pacific in particular (and even films like Platoon) just showed how pointless and futile war is, with lives being lost for no real gain. Great action shots and cuts, but with a Spielberg movie, what else would one expect. Tom Hanks was blah, Matt Damon was fresh faced and slightly less blah.