Day 74: Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Movie #43 – Saving Private Ryan (1998) - 169 min, cert 15.

Following the D-Day landings in June 1944, it is noticed that a mother is about to receive 3 telegrams at the same time, each one informing her of the death of one of her sons. A decision is taken to find the fourth son, a paratrooper, Private James Ryan, who has been dropped somewhere in occupied France, and get him out. The man assigned this mission is Capt John Miller (Tom Hanks) who has to put together a small squad of 8 men and head inland to find him.

This is a movie of three acts. Act 1 is a half-hour no-holds-barred account of the bloodiest of the D-Day landing sites, Omaha Beach. The sense of chaos is overwhelming. Everywhere there are men being cut down by machine gun fire, while others are blown to pieces by artillery shells. By the time the beach is taken, the waves breaking against the beachhead are no longer blue, but a visceral red.

Act 2 is the calm in the eye of the storm as Capt Miller leads his men across France hunting for news of Ryan’s company. This is where the characters are developed. We get to know the members of Miller’s squad as individuals with their own personalities, but at the same time we can identify with their ordinariness. This is a period of brief, but violent, skirmishes separated by longer periods of relative peace.

In the final part, they locate Ryan but find that he doesn’t want to leave. His company is short on men and equipment and trying to hold a bridge until reinforcements arrive. To leave them another man short would seem tantamount to desertion. Miller takes the decision that he and his men will stay and help until relief arrives.

This is an amazing film. Easily the best WWII movie I have ever seen, and indeed the best war movie in general. In the same way that he did in Schindler’s List, Spielberg portrays the real horror of the situation by making the footage look documentary-like. The scenes on Omaha Beach are so realistic that the film grabs you straightaway and doesn’t let you go for the entire running time of nearly 3 hours.

Score – 10/10. You’ll have to go a long way to find a better war movie.

Next up is Vertigo, Hitchcock’s fourth entry in the list already, and we’re still in the Top 50. This is the first one of his that I haven’t seen before