Epic war film.

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2016)

In the present day, an elderly World War II veteran and his family visit the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France. The veteran walks around the cemetery and, upon seeing one specific gravestone, collapses to his knees, overwhelmed by emotion.
The film flashes back to the morning of June 6, 1944, the beginning of the Normandy Invasion, as American soldiers prepare to land on Omaha Beach. They suffer heavily from their struggle against German infantry, machine gun nests, and artillery fire. Captain John H. Miller, a company commander of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, survives the initial landing and assembles a group of his Rangers to penetrate the German defenses, leading to a breakout from the beach. After the battle, the body of a dead soldier lying face down on the beach, with "S. Ryan" inscribed on the back of his uniform, is shown.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C, at the U.S. War Department, General George Marshall is informed that three of the four brothers of the Ryan family were killed in action and that their mother is to receive all three telegrams in the same day. He learns that the fourth son, Private First Class James Francis Ryan, is a paratrooper and is missing in action somewhere in Normandy. Marshall, after reading Abraham Lincoln's Bixby letter, orders that Ryan must be found and sent home immediately.
Three days after D-Day, Miller receives orders to find Ryan and bring him back from the front. He assembles six men from his company— T/Sgt. Mike Horvath, Private First Class Richard Reiben, Privates Stanley Mellish, Adrian Caparzo, Danny Jackson, medic Irwin Wade—and T/5 Timothy Upham, a cartographer who speaks French and German, loaned from the 29th Infantry Division. Miller and his men move out to Neuville; there, they meet a squad from the 101st Airborne Division.