Saving Private Ryan hits an important milestone in 2023, as it celebrates the 25th anniversary of the release of inarguably one of the best war movies ever made. The Steven Spielberg film, nominated for an impressive 11 Academy Awards, is celebrated for its accurate depiction of the Second World War as shown through realistic and often difficult-to-watch scenes.

Helmed by a brilliant ensemble cast that includes Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Giovanni Ribisi, among others. The story follows a group of American soldiers as they go behind enemy lines to find a paratrooper after all his brothers are killed in action. The film is hard to forget once it reaches its end and is a must-watch for every cinephile, let alone every fan of war movies.

Saving Private Ryan's D-Day Normandy Scene Is Incredibly Realistic


One of the most venerated parts of Saving Private Ryan comes via a flashback and is nearly at the beginning of the film. It is a virtual assault of the senses and one of the reasons why the movie still holds up today. The movie begins with a prologue in which a veteran brings his family to the American cemetery at Normandy. The old man then has a flashback and viewers are pulled into the Omaha Beach assault following the Normandy Landing.

The scene outlines John H. Miller (Hanks) as he leads his Company C, 2nd Ranger Battalion in a breakout, and what follows is 30 minutes of on-the-ground POV that never turns away from any of the assault's most brutal events. From bodies flying after being blown up and disemboweled dead soldiers on the beach to the seawater red with blood, the scene required over 750 extras on the beach and over 17,000 squibs to make the sequence incredibly realistic. It's loud, horrible, and beautifully crafted, without an ounce of Spielbergian sentimentality.

Saving Private Ryan Accurately Depicts The Horrors Of War


While the sequence received mixed reviews from actual Allied soldiers, it was mostly considered accurate in its portrayal of just how horrific the actual day was. The Omaha scene is just one in a movie with an almost three-hour runtime, and while it's the most shocking, as the first battle scene, it's just the beginning. And one of the things the film does best is its portrayal of just how unrelenting and gruesome war is, made all the more touching through its personal story of (mostly) real-life men. This realism is somewhat due to the fact that Saving Private Ryan is based on a true story, that of the actual Niland brothers: Frederick (Fritz), Edward, Preston, Robert.

And just like in real war, the good people sometimes die, men often lose their close fellow men and friends, and death can be graphic and merciless. There are times when the audience sees just how young, confused and alone these men are, and this was still rather rare in Hollywood movies that, up to this point, were still largely telling stories of one-dimensional soldiers who bravely and happily marched into battle to emerge the victors on the other side.

It Reminds Us That Regular People Fought In WWII


Saving Private Ryan is brought to life by its cast of exceptional actors and the movie includes several cameos from now very-recognizable faces, including Bryan Cranston. Unlike many other warm movies, these characters are all shown to be real people with depth and dimension and the audience gets to know many of them quite well. In showing the reality of war in all its messiness, following young men unsure of their decisions and mostly just full of fear, Saving Private Ryan reminds the audience that many people who fought in WW2 were just regular people with no military background. Tom Hanks' character was an English teacher and baseball coach before joining the war, for example, and the movie carefully includes details of the backstories and lives of each main character.

In telling the real story of who made up the Allies, Spielberg humanizes the characters and gives the audience something to relate to and see themselves in. These were young boys from all around the country who just wanted to go home -- they were sometimes bored, sometimes joked around, they made mistakes, got in trouble, and suffered great personal loss. As Roger Ebert described, not only Miller, but the "actors playing the men under him are effective, partly because Spielberg resists the temptation to make them zany 'characters' in the tradition of World War II movies, and makes them deliberately ordinary."

Saving Private Ryan Was Honest About The Morally Gray Aspect Of War


Saving Private Ryan also shows that war can be inhumane on both sides, as the goal's focus for everyone shifts back and forth between the broader military campaign and mere self-preservation. What is shown is a completely different environment from the young soldiers' everyday life prior, and so a new kind of existence begins to form inside the vacuum of war, wherein Allies can sometimes be merciless, and the other soldiers can also be seen as young, frightened and confused. Because of the environment, they become familiar with a landscape in which life is cheap, and one's actions are born out of trauma and a need for some kind of retribution. In many cases, the Allied soldiers are seen as just doing the best they can in the given situation with the emotional and tactical tools they have, trauma and all, and sometimes this means morally questionable decisions must be made.

One scene that stands out in this regard is the one in which the main characters have to decide what to do with a captured Nazi soldier after he killed one of their comrades. In the end, and facing mixed opinions, Captain Miller decides to release the prisoner, further cementing his role as the most morally stalwart of the group as its leader. While perhaps not the most emotionally harrowing scene in Saving Private Ryan, it's one of the most unforgettable. A large part of the movie's realism comes in its poetic telling of the push-pull between many of the characters as they must decide between the morally right thing to do and following orders. But there isn't always a right answer, and it isn't always immediately clear if the correct decision has been made.

Roger Ebert called Saving Private Ryan a "powerful experience," and that is an understatement. It is one of the best war movies ever made because it shows what is essentially only a small snapshot of WW2 and a particularly small group of men within it who are not always shown as perfect, brave, or even always right. The unparalleled cinematography of Janusz Kaminski grips the audience from the get-go in Saving Private Ryan's opening scene by throwing the audience right on the ground with the men, and immediately tells the viewer that they are not going to be spared from seeing any of the ugliness. What begins with this scene unfolds into one of the most moving cinematic experiences, and it is likely as close as anyone will ever get to depicting what real life was like on the battlefields during those years on both a personal and tactical level.