Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Wow! Where do I start with this film? I took advantage of the fact this was in the theaters again this weekend for the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion and I am really glad I did. This movie is powerful in any format, and on any size screen I've ever seen it on, but the big screen took it to another level. Any part that may have made you emotional before, amp up the emotion. The fighting sequences... Suffice to say that I'm glad I took the opportunity. The movie opens with a brief scene of a gentleman walking through a graveyard in France. The import of this scene is not immediately known. As this man gets hit by emotion the movie transitions to the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. This depiction of the invasion is intense. We watch as members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks), fight ashore to secure the beachhead. Amidst this fighting two brothers are killed in action. We soon discover that the third brother was also KIA, and that the mother of all three brothers is scheduled to receive all three telegrams on the same day. This is brought to the attention of United States Army Chief of Staff, George C Marshall (Harve Presnell) as well as the fact that a fourth brother, Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon), a member of the airborne infantry, is behind enemy lines in an unknown location. General Marshall decides to alleviate some of her grief and orders that someone be sent to find Private Ryan. Captain Miller is given the assignment and told he can take eight men. He picks from his unit and leaves the rest to be folded into another unit. This group sets off across France, trying to find "a needle in a stack of needles." There's many things that happen along the way that serve to drive home some of the realities of war, and they are effective. After making their way across and through various scenes, that are familiar to anyone who knows much about the war, the group finds their man. A soldier who refuses to leave his unit. Captain Miller's men team up with what remains of Private Ryan's unit and fight to defend a strategic bridge. Not to spoil the film, but most of the characters we are now invested in are killed and Private Ryan is told to "earn" their sacrifice. The film cuts back to the cemetary and James Francis Ryan as he finds the headstone of Captain Miller. It's an emotional and fitting end to what you have just seen unfold. This film is loaded with stars in minor roles. The unit we follow most of the movie boasts the likes of Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Adam Goldberg, and Vin Diesel. We also get to see Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti, and others in supporting roles. There really was a lot of star power in this one but they obviously understood what they were making and all worked together well. As is to be expected in such a movie, there are a number of historical inaccuracies. I'm not going to go through them all but a few seem worth noting. First, there was no Private Ryan, nor Captain Miller. Both are storytelling functions of the movie. Private Ryan was modeled after Frederick "Fritz" Niland, who had two brothers killed at Utah Beach and the third in Burma and his mother did receive all three death notifications on the same day. There's no record of such a search mission, but Private Niland was sent home from the combat zone. Rommelle, the location of the final scene, also did not exist. Rather Rommelle was the name of a german commander. There are others, but you get the idea. These innaccuraries are easy to overlook given what the rest of the movie accomplishes. This is not a movie to watch regularly, but if you haven't seen it, go out of your way to watch it. This film was nominated for 11 Oscars and won 5. For me, 10 out of 10 stars.