20 Years Ago Today: 'Saving Private Ryan'

KenJac7/24/2018 5:30 PM

On this day in 1998, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was released and set the bar for exceptionalism in war movies. It’s a gritty, unyielding look at the second World War that didn’t glorify or lionize anything about the deadliest conflict in human history, and the lesson it taught in realism helped pave the way for some incredible projects that came after like ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Black Hawk Down’, ‘We Were Soldiers’, ‘American Sniper’, ‘Letters From Iwo Jima’, ‘Hacksaw Ridge’, etc.

The opening 27 minute scene capturing the invasion of Omaha Beach is considered one of the most brutal and realistic in cinematic history. I remember a friend of my family, who was a veteran of WW2, telling us how he had to walk out of the theater, thats how real it felt.

Objectively and outside the realm of just war movies, this is considered by many moviegoers to be a top 20 movie of all time. It’s perfectly paced, has an exceptional blend of action and dramatic scenes, and featured one of the best castings of all time. To that point, I want to break down how each of these cast members had at least one incredible and moving scene.

Tom Sizemore and Edward Burns

Sergeant Horvath (Sizemore) plays Captain Miller’s (Hanks) second in command, who is unwavering in his support of his orders. Private Reiben (Burns) is upset over the order to release a German POW who was responsible for killing their medic, Wade (Ribisi). Tempers flare up as Reiben threatens to go AWOL, and Miller calms them all down by revealing the answer to the question they’ve all been asking. It’s an incredibly moving scene, as they find out Miller is just a schoolteacher trying to do whatever he can to get back to his family.

Vin Diesel

Private Caparzo (Diesel) sees a scared family in the rubble, and wants to help them get their children out of the warzone. His compassion leads to him getting shot by a German sniper, who uses him as bait to draw out the rest of the group. Caparzo insists he can make it at first, but eventually realizes he is going to die. He begs his friend, Private Mellish (Golberg), to get his death letter to his father. He dies before he can hand it to Mellish.

Giovanni Ribisi

Miller decides they should destroy a German MG nest/radar station on the way to Ryan because he doesn’t want them to ambush the next group of G.I.’s that pass. During the assault, Wade is hit and goes down. He tries to guide his friends on how to fix him, then seemingly accepts he is going to die by asking for morphine to ease the passing. The weight of that realization seems to hit him after that, because he begs for life and calls out to his mother. To this day, it is one of the most brutal death scenes I have ever watched.

Adam Goldberg and Jeremy Davies

Corporal Upham (Davies) is the de facto hate-able member of the group. A cartographer recruited into Miller’s squad as a translator, he openly and clearly does not want to fight. He cowers in fear as Mellish battles a Nazi in hand-to-hand combat. Mellish dies a brutal death, getting impaled with his own bayonet by the Nazi who then walks past Upham on the stairway. It’s easy to hate Upham, but the reality is that none of us know how we would react if we were put in that situation. Davies performance expresses this fear perfectly, and Goldbergs primal rage in his battle vs the German is incredible.

Barry Pepper

Private Jackson is the squads sharpshooter, stationed in a bell tower during the battle of Ramelle. He’s calling out German positions, praying as he picks them off. He tries to stop a tank from flanking Millers position, drawing its attention away. He gets their attention, and screams for the machine gunner in the tower with him to escape as the tank fires, killing them both. It wasn’t necessarily a dramatic scene as far as how it relates to the others, but it’s emotional because of the attachment you build with him throughout the movie.

Matt Damon

Probably the most impressive of the group due to the fact that it was entirely improvised by Damon, this scene was another gut wrenching look at some of the realities of war. Private Ryan (Damon) talks to Miller about how he can’t remember his brother’s faces. To jog his own memory, he tells Miller a story about the last time they were all together. He’s laughing and smiling like any of us do when we tell a story like that, and then his face sobers up when he realizes he will never see them again. It’s an incredible scene, and it’s unbelievable that this all came off the top of Damons head.

Tom Hanks (Two scenes)

Like I mentioned earlier, this scene humanizes Miller in a huge way. He was sort of their stoic leader, and he shows you that he’s more than just a cog in the machine. He’s just a man trying to get home to his wife, and every mission is just one more step towards getting home. Tom Hanks navigates this scene in an amazing way, just entirely defeated by the whole situation.

Miller raises that ever-shaking hand to Ryan’s head and says the famous line, “Earn This”. His hand stops shaking and he dies, having completed his mission. It’s a bittersweet moment, with Ryan finally safe at the expense of the squad. This transitions into the current day Ryan at Millers grave in Normandy, where he asks his wife if he had, in fact, earned their sacrifice.

It’s a masterclass in directing by Spielberg, and well deserving of the 11 Oscar noms and 5 wins it got. Also, I can’t mention this without emphasizing how incredible John Williams score was. So god damn moving.

It’s truly a perfect war movie, and just movie in general. On the lighter side of things, I took a look at some of the red carpet photos from the premier and they did not disappoint.