Saving Private Ryan Review

Rating: 9/10 (25 October 2011)

This film deserves historical recognition. Private Ryan's story is loosely based on the story of the Niland brothers. The Niland brothers all went into the war, and only two of the four survived. When our guys landed on the beach, Steven Spielburg did an excellent job at making it realistic. He didn't have all of our guys ready to fight and kill the Germans; he showed that some or the soldiers wouldn't have been able to handle it. He showed their fear. He also did a very good job of making us not like the translator. I liked how Speilburg ran the story line of actually going out and saving Private Ryan. This way, the audience got a chance to connect with the characters, and it gave the death of Wade in particular a lot more of an impact. Like all war movies, they got stuff wrong. Some of the weapons fired more than they would have been capable of the time period, or blew up before they got hit. I think Tom Hanks did an incredible job of playing his role, and that the audience was able to pick up on that. Also, the ending was a complete blind side. I thought for sure the old guy in the beginning was Captain Miller because of how they introduced him, and to find out that it was actually Private Ryan who survived caught me completely off guard. I also thought that it was ironic that the soldier who wanted to leave the mission was the only one out of the eight to survive. All in all, I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to learn more about how combat on D-Day actually went. Saving Private Ryan had to be one of my favorite war movies of all time.