Saving Private Ryan (1998)

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.

Director:

Steven Spielberg

Writer:

Robert Rodat

Stars:

Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns

Top 250 #37 | Won 5 Oscars. Another 58 wins & 56 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Tom Hanks	...	Captain Miller
Tom Sizemore	...	Sergeant Horvath
Edward Burns	...	Private Reiben
Barry Pepper	...	Private Jackson
Adam Goldberg	...	Private Mellish
Vin Diesel	...	Private Caparzo
Giovanni Ribisi	...	T-4 Medic Wade
Jeremy Davies	...	Corporal Upham
Matt Damon	...	Private Ryan
Ted Danson	...	Captain Hamill
Paul Giamatti	...	Sergeant Hill
Dennis Farina	...	Lieutenant Colonel Anderson
Joerg Stadler	...	Steamboat Willie
Max Martini	...	Corporal Henderson (as Maximilian Martini)
Dylan Bruno	...	Toynbe

Storyline

Opening with the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion under Cpt. Miller fight ashore to secure a beachhead. Amidst the fighting, two brothers are killed in action. Earlier in New Guinea, a third brother is KIA. Their mother, Mrs. Ryan, is to receive all three of the grave telegrams on the same day. The United States Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, is given an opportunity to alleviate some of her grief when he learns of a fourth brother, Private James Ryan, and decides to send out 8 men (Cpt. Miller and select members from 2nd Rangers) to find him and bring him back home to his mother...

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Plot Keywords:

normandy | invasion | general | army | soldier | 

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Taglines:

In the Last Great Invasion of the Last Great War, The Greatest Danger for Eight Men was Saving... One.

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Genres:

Action | Drama | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for intense prolonged realistically graphic sequences of war violence, and for language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official Site

Country:

USA

Language:

English French German Czech

Release Date:

24 July 1998 (USA)

Also Known As:

Rescatando al soldado Ryan

Filming Locations:

Calvados, France

Box Office

Budget:

$70,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$63,500,000 (Non-US) (2 October 1998)

Gross:

$216,119,491 (USA) (21 May 1999)

Company Credits

Production Co:

DreamWorks SKG, Paramount Pictures, Amblin Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

169 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The siege in the village of Ramelle was filmed on a set created on a disused airfield in Hatfield, England. The bridge so valiantly defended actually crosses a three foot deep canal created for the movie. Earlier scenes in the village of Neuville-au-Plain used the same set carefully shot from different angles.

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Goofs

At the beginning of the movie during the invasion scenes, Captain Miller has his Captain's bars prominently displayed on the front of his helmet. A popular misconception is that nobody with rank wore it on the front lines. This was not true for the initial D-day operations. Photographic evidence shows ranger officers with their rank in white (like Miller) or black (like Hamill) on the front of their helmets. Only after the initial D-day operations did officers and NCOs employ the white vertical stripe and the horizontal stripe (respectively) on the back of their helmets to avoid being primary targets of sniper fire.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Ryan's son: [running to comfort his father] Dad?
[flashback to D-Day]
LCVP pilot: Clear the ramp! Thirty seconds. God be with ya!

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Crazy Credits

There are no opening credits after the title is shown.

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Connections

Featured in The 71st Annual Academy Awards (1999)

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Soundtracks

"Tu Es Partout"
(1941)
Written by Édith Piaf & Marguerite Monnot
Performed by Édith Piaf
Courtesy of Mercury Records, France
By Arrangement with PolyGram Film & TV Music

User Reviews

Actually it's pretty GOOD history

I know it's fashionable to trash successful movies but at least be honest about the trashing... Pvt. Ryan was fiction but it was pretty good HISTORICAL fiction. The details were well thought out and based on reality.

There was nothing stupid about the portrayal of the German army... Rommel DID blunder in his placement of force, The high command DID think Calais was going to be the invasion spot, not Normandy. Hitler didn't wake up until noon on that day and his aides were afraid to wake him. The Rangers did come in right behind the first wave and did take a beach exit by sheer will to get the hell off the beach. The bluffs were the scene of heavy close fighting. The german defenders were mostly Eastern European conscripts from defeated areas. (note that the 2 men that tried to surrender were NOT speaking German). There WAS a young man rescued from interior Normandy after his brothers were all killed. He WAS an airborne trooper (the difference was that he was found by a chaplain and was removed from the front.)

The battles inside Normandy were small actions town to town, street to street, house to house. Small actions like taking the radar station happened. Small actions like a handful of men defending a river bridge against odds happened. Small squads of men, formed out of the misdrops banded together ad hoc to fight. There were all enlisted groups and all officer groups. A General did die in the glider assault. FUBAR aptly described much of what happened that day.

And there were only Americans in the movie because the Brits and Canadians were many klicks away in a different area... this was Omaha beach. The story was an American one. And Monty DID bog down the advance and everyone knew it. And as for "American Stereotypes"... well those pretty much define America: my college roomie was a wise-ass New York Jew. My best friend was a second generation east coast Sicilian. My college girlfriend was a third generation German. My first wife was French and English. I'm Irish, my boss is Norwegian and I work with a Navaho... you get the point?

So much for it being bad history. It was in fact an excellent way to let a jaded and somewhat ignorant-of-their-past generation *feel* something of what their grandparents (LIVING grandparents) went through. It is perhaps less important that the details be exact as the feel be right. Even now the details are not fully known or knowable about that campaign... it was too big, too complex and too chaotic to be knowable. There is not even an accurate casualty count of D-Day itself.

Now as to the depth of characters. What I saw there was the extraordinary circumstances into which ordinary people were thrown and what happened to them. I saw the things that would mark a generation (I have heard in my elderly male patients sentiments similar to what Cpt. Miller was expressing when he announced his ordinariness) I saw the dehumanization that occurs with war and its mitigation moment to moment, man to man... Cpt. Miller didn't know anything about Ryan and he didn't care... until Ryan revealed his humanity to him with his story of his brothers. Pvt. Reiban was ready to walk out of the situation until he discoverd his captains ordinariness and his humanity. Then he began to look to him almost as a father. Pvt. Mellish rightfully delights in his revenge for all the times he's had to take it because he was Jewish by telling German captives he's "Juden!" Nerdish Cpl. Upham can stand alongside his bigger, stronger, braver Ranger compatriots and describe the poetry and melancholy of Edith Piaf's song... then face his cowardice, turn around and stand up in the face of danger and finally demonstrate the dehumanization of the enterprise he was enmeshed in by executing Steamboat Willie... even though Willie had no more choice about being there than Upham did and in other circumstances would have made a friend.

I could go on and on with this but enough already. OK, perhaps it is not The Best Movie Ever Made but it is still a good movie. And if one will take the blinders of fashionable negativism off they will see it. Finally, this is not a patriotic story... if anything it is an acknowledgement and thank you to all those old men still out there that did so much for us. To them I say a deep and sincere thank you.