Saving Private Ryan was one of my favorite films when I was a younger. In my 8th or 9th grade probably I watched it for the first time and loved every bit of it. Even now, some 10 years later, after watching thousands of films, it remains a film I admire dearly; but now that my film tastes and philosophies have matured, I look at it with a different view and find a flaw (or maybe not a flaw, maybe it's just a phenomenon that is distasteful for me and not really for many others). Saving Private Ryan glorifies war. Year after year, Hollywood war films have been glorifying war and have kept adding cheap sentiment into the genre and most of all, have left the viewers with a positive feel. When you think about it, it's not just war films that does it, it's ninety nine percent of Hollywood films that try to make the viewers feel rather pleased or content at the end and never let the viewers raise questions. But, let's not get into that. We're talking about war films here. Now, what does war do to humankind? Does it ever leave us anything positive to thing about? Or does it usually destroy a whole nation and scar the people who lived through the war, scar them for their lifetime? If so, why should war films be afraid to bring that out? As I said, I admire Saving Private Ryan dearly: it is brilliantly written, directed and acted. The first scene in the battlefield is one of the most gripping war scenes ever. It's grotesque; the first person point of view makes it all the more engaging and the masterful direction of Spielberg is there for all to see. Then again, the aforementioned point still remains. Most of the time, the scenes are action packed glorification of war and of course it ended with a positive note where viewers see Ryan have had a good life thanks to the Captain Miller and co. Every viewer leaves the theater with a good feeling and that's it. No questions raised and everybody, although a bit sad about Miller, are more than happy to let it go because of Ryan's survival and "happily ever after life". Does it always happen like this in wars? I for one think that a war touches the thousands of life involved in a terrifying way and never lets go. No one ever really fully recovers, and, that's exactly what I expect to see in a war film. Maybe I'm asking too much but I hate seeing special directors conforming to this Hollywood trend of glorifying the war. In doing so, they don't just fail to bring out the actual results of war but also fail to get the viewer into thinking beyond the film. And, that's where Saving Private Ryan fails, it never really leaves you asking questions, raising points, thinking deeply and diving into the heart of the war through your mind. And, it's not just this one, Spielberg did the same with Schindler (mind you, I'm a big fan of Schindler's list too but again, the same question I can raise about this one too). Here's what Stanley Kubrick said about the film "Schindler's List is about success, the Holocaust was about failure." Now, we all know, how Kubrick's war films always went, they never end on a positive note, they bring out the gruesomeness and arbitrariness of war, and make you think, think, think. So, I'm going to mention 5 films that, like Paths, actually depicts war as it is and leaves the viewers cursing and crucifying the great big phenomenon. I'm not gonna get into how they don't glorify war and whatnot, as I've mentioned, they don't. I will just include some general remarks about the films and will try to get you, readers, interested into watching them.