[yasr_overall_rating]
Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.
I remember going to see “Saving Private Ryan” when it first came out in 1998 and leaving the theater dumbfounded. Just five years earlier, Spielberg had shaken the world with “Schindler’s List,” a film that left little to the imagination as it presented the horrors of the Holocaust on the big screen for all to witness. That was a monumental achievement for the most successful filmmaker in Hollywood but with “Saving Private Ryan,” he took on a story that transpired during the same time period and created one of the most visceral and emotional war movies ever put on film. The opening scene, where U.S. soldiers land on the beaches of Normandy on June 6th, 1944, was shot utilizing the now overly saturated handheld camera technique, but at the time, it had never been used for a war film of this magnitude and it was surprisingly effective in putting the viewer right next to the soldiers as bullets ricocheted over their heads and explosions surrounded them. Out of the entire movie, this scene is the most realistic and heartrending, as we watch dying soldiers, with missing arms and legs, calling out for their mothers.
In Washington, D.C. at the U.S. War Department, General George Marshall (Harve Presnell) discovers that three brothers from the same family have been killed in action. When he is informed that there is a fourth brother, Private James Ryan (Matt Damon), who is somewhere in Normandy, he orders that Ryan be located and brought back to the U.S. so his mother won’t have lost all four of her sons. After storming the beach at Normandy, Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) of the 2nd Ranger Battalion assembles a platoon of soldiers after he is given the task of locating Ryan and bringing him back home. As they set out on their trek, some of his men voice their concern at the fact that the eight of them might perish trying to save one man but Miller tells them that it is their mission and if finding and returning Ryan to his family back in America is his and their ticket home, he is more than willing to achieve that objective. When they eventually locate Ryan in the small town of Ramelle, Miller informs him of his brothers’ deaths and that he has been ordered home but as distraught as Ryan is, he will not abandon his brothers in arms. Their particular mission is to defend the last remaining key bridge against the Germans and unable to force Ryan to leave, Miller and his men decide to stay and help them.
Spielberg has been known to end most of his movies on a happy note (“A.I.,” “War of the Worlds”) even when it is not warranted but here, while some of the soldiers we share the film’s runtime with, survive, the overwhelming majority do not and as a result, the finale is bittersweet. We know going into a war film that there will be deaths but Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat do such an exceptional job at creating realistic characters and believable dialog and interchanges between them, you honestly have no idea who will be next to go. And in a movie with such big names attached it makes it even more compelling. You think, “they can’t possibly kill off this guy,” and in the next scene, they are shot by a sniper or blown up in a bell tower. Prepare for the unexpected. On an aside, the opening scene of the Normandy Invasion was actually shot in Ireland, County Wexford to be precise, and it was on that exact beach that I spent many childhood summers, frolicking in the water with my sister and cousins. When I first saw the film back in 1998, I didn’t know at that time that they had shot the scene in Ireland but in watching it, there was something very familiar about it. If you still haven’t seen “Saving Private Ryan,” do yourself a favor and go and watch it on 4K Ultra HD, the sound and crisp picture quality will blow you away. Literally!
Now available on 4K Ultra HD
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