Time has proved its unassuming, unadorned craftsmanship - and Ryan's understanding of men pushed to the edge, never asking for an audience's sympathy, only our awareness.

War on the ground has rarely been done much better than this.

One of the best of the lost patrol movies, set in Korea in 1950, bleakly anti-heroic and prefiguring Milestone's Pork Chop Hill in the bitter irony of its climactic assault on a hill.

A razor-sharp use of environment. Though the territory is wild and unknown, Mann still emphasizes clarity of action over chaos.