Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan

The film Saving Private Ryan is a historical film based on World War Two and the invasion of Normandy, France. This film was directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat. The cast includes such famous actors as: Tom Hanks, Vin Diesel, Tom Sizemore, and Matt Damon. Saving Private Ryan’s running time is 170 minutes, and is rated R for violence and language. Since the films release on July 24, 1998, it has won five Oscars and fifty-two other film awards.

Captain John Miller leads a company of Rangers in the battle for Omaha beach on D-Day, June 6th, 1944. After breaking the strong German lines on the French coast, the Allies continue their advance through Europe, however Captain Miller and his company are sent on a different kind of mission. They are sent to find an Army Paratrooper by the name of James Francis Ryan to remove him from the battlefield and take him home, due to the fact that his three brothers were killed in combat. The film twists the viewer through the reality of war, while sticking strongly to the plot, with these men questioning everything they believe in, in order to save a man who means nothing to them.

The opening scene to this film is one of the most realistic battle scenes ever to be remade on film. Although there are simple minor errors in the film, like how the Nazi troops were portrayed to have shaved heads, when, in fact, this was not the style at all for a Nazi soldier. The battle scenes besides the opening scene were fiction, "but of the kind that illuminates truth rather than diminishing it”. The battle scenes were created by the imagination and the idea of what might have happened in the war. Some Generals in the story were actual leaders in the war, but the lead characters in the film do not relate to anyone specific in real life. The plot of finding Private Ryan is historically accurate, and this film is based off a real life event of a family of which this happened to: the Hilland family.