AAA Review - Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Epic war movie of our time

Once again, director Steven Spielberg shook the world with this epic war movie Saving Private Ryan that was nominated for multiple awards at the 71st Academy. Spielberg himself won the Best Director award. Saving Private Ryan realistic cinematography of World War II was lauded by movie goers around the war, recognised today as one of the most significant war movie of all time.

Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120815/

Quick plot

The movie starts off with a bloody battle between the Americans and Germans on Omaha beach, the famous Normandy invasion. Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) leads the 2nd Rangers battallion who successfully took down the Germans defence.

On his next mission, Captain Miller was tasked to take his small squad in search for a Private James Ryan who was in an Airborne division somewhere in Normandy. James was the youngest of 4 boys in the Ryan family and his 3 elder brothers were killed in the war. The U.S. war department made the decision to bring him back to America.

While searching for James Ryan, Captain Miller and his squad came across several small battles in the region. One of his men, Adrian Caparzo (Vin Diesel. Yes that Vin Diesel), was killed by a German sniper while trying to save a French family. The squad began to question the mission, risking their own lives just to bring back a Private. Captain Miller explained that this is just another mission to him, and he will undertake whatever mission assigned to him just so that he can return home sooner.

The next day, the squad found the Private James Ryan. When told by Captain Miller that he is relived of his duties, Ryan refused to leave his post. He was part of a small group of troopers who are guarding a bridge. Captain Miller decided to stay behind and help with the bridge defence.

However, the group of American soldiers were outnumbered by the Germans, who came with heavy tanks and huge number of infantries. As the fight continues, more and more soldiers were killed, including many of Captain Miller's squad. As the German threatened to overrun the bridge, Captain Miller attempt to set off the explosives planted on the bridge to bring it down, but was critically shot. In his dying moment, reinforcements finally arrived including American Mustangs destroying the tanks.

James Ryan survived the battle and returned home. In the closing scene, he was already an old man weeping at Captain Miller's grave, still wondering if he is worthy of the sacrifice Miller and his men made to save him.

Review

Saving Private Ryan is almost the perfect war movie. Lots of battle action, good plot, great acting, and in the end, (almost) everyone dies, which is a must for war movie!

The first 15 minutes of the movie is still one of the best war battle scene in moving history. It was probably the first time that we saw such realistic war scene, where soldiers get blown into pieces by heavy machine guns, or losing a limb or two by grenades explosives. Many war veterans had also came out saying the battles in the movies were a realistic depiction of the war they had went through themselves.

War movies had historically failed to attract audiences but Saving Private Ryan changed all that and sparked many more great war movies like Black Hawk Down.

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• Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/857-saving-private-ryan

• Critic: AAA

• 영화 URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/857-saving-private-ryan

• 별점: AAA