Saving Private Ryan

UK Release Date. 11 September 1998
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 49 mins
Director. Steven Spielberg 
Cast. Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Ted Danson, Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Dennis Farina, Paul Giamatti, Adam Goldberg, Tom Hanks, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Tom Sizemore.
Rating. 96%

Review.

The 500th film to be reviewed on the Bravo Alfredo blog is Saving Private Ryan. Released in 1998, Saving Private Ryan instantly became a modern classic largely due to its harrowing portrayal of World War II. 

War is hell. Countless films depicting the Vietnam War have driven this message home. But before Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, few films set during World War II ever attempted to point out this particular fact. Think of the bravado of films such as The Longest Day, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, Kelly's Heroes and A Bridge Too Far.

Saving Private Ryan tells the story of a small company of soldiers led by Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) sent to rescue the eponymous Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) when the US Armed Forces learn that Ryan’s three older brothers have been killed in action. Captain Miller’s quixotic mission is to save one American soldier while thousands die around him. It is a work of pure fiction, the invention of screenwriter Robert Rodat.

The astonishing, and now infamous, opening sequence stunned audiences with its graphic portrayal of injuries as Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, where German troops were already lying in wait. Working again with the Polish-born cinematographer Janus Kaminski, Spielberg abandoned his usual emphatically storyboard style in favour of a more urgent, handheld approach, with desaturated colour emulating the look of World War II colour newsreels. The concussive opening sequence on Omaha Beach might just be the best evocation of the pure confusion, randomness and futility of war on film.

Those opening twenty minutes set the tone for the rest of the film, where death lurks around every single corner, and these poor men, while heroic in their own right, are scared every step of the way. Spielberg delivers set piece after set piece, culminating in a brilliantly staged pitched battle in Ramelle that is beyond intense, all the while developing strong, believable characters. Tom Hanks, in particular, gives one of his best performances. His shell-shocked look in the shallows as he tips a helmet of bloody water over his head is sheer perfection. Perfectly cast as an ordinary man doing the best he can in impossible circumstances. The revelation of Miller’s peacetime origins, the subject of much speculation among the other soldiers, is brilliantly timed to provide one of the film's most compelling moments.

However, in many ways, the film's main character is not Captain Miller, nor is it even Private Ryan, but instead, the naive Corporal Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies) - an interpreter seconded to Miller's squad after the landing on Omaha Beach. From the start, Upham is set up as the innocent who - in time-honoured tradition - will surely come into his own under fire. Spielberg keeps playing on our expectations that he will snap out of it and do something heroic. But he never does. Only at the very end of the film does Upham finally take action, but by that point, it's hardly an act of redemption.

Like Schindler’s List before, Spielberg opts to end Saving Private Ryan in the present day, with a survivor of the appalling carnage contemplating a memorial to the man who saved him. Spielberg lays on the schmaltz, playing the scene out for an extended period of earnest hand-wringing and soul-searching. I could have done without this, if truth be told.

At the 71st Academy Awards in March 1999, the film was awarded Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing. To this day, I’ll never understand how Saving Private Ryan did not win Best Picture, losing out to Shakespeare In Love. 

Saving Private Ryan is now established as the standard against which all war films are judged. Gripping, visceral and utterly uncynical, with audacious combat sequences. It gives the film an incredible weight that many other films have tried to replicate, but never quite succeeded in doing so.