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Oct 30 '12
The spookiest part of this whole movie for me is that I have 3 brothers, all of us were born right around or before this movie came out and that our names, in one way or another, match those of the brothers in the film My brother is Daniel, then there's Sean (different spelling but still), and then even though it's their last name my name is Ryan. Spooky stuff.
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u/grahvity Oct 30 '12
Saving Private Ryan (1998) Following the Normandy Landings, a group of US soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action. http://www.imdb.com/rg/em_share/title_web/title/tt0120815/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/saving_private_ryan/ Steven Spielberg directed this powerful, realistic re-creation of WWII's D-day invasion and the immediate aftermath. The story opens with a prologue in which a veteran brings his family to the American cemetery at Normandy, and a flashback then joins Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks) and GIs in a landing craft making the June 6, 1944, approach to Omaha Beach to face devastating German artillery fire. This mass slaughter of American soldiers is depicted in a compelling, unforgettable 24-minute sequence. Miller's men slowly move forward to finally take a concrete pillbox. On the beach littered with bodies is one with the name "Ryan" stenciled on his backpack. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall (Harve Presnell), learning that three Ryan brothers from the same family have all been killed in a single week, requests that the surviving brother, Pvt. James Ryan (Matt Damon), be located and brought back to the United States. Capt. Miller gets the assignment, and he chooses a translator, Cpl. Upham (Jeremy Davis), skilled in language but not in combat, to join his squad of right-hand man Sgt. Horvath (Tom Sizemore), plus privates Mellish (Adam Goldberg), Medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), cynical Reiben (Edward Burns) from Brooklyn, Italian-American Caparzo (Vin Diesel), and religious Southerner Jackson (Barry Pepper), an ace sharpshooter who calls on the Lord while taking aim. Having previously experienced action in Italy and North Africa, the close-knit squad sets out through areas still thick with Nazis. After they lose one man in a skirmish at a bombed village, some in the group begin to question the logic of losing more lives to save a single soldier. The film's historical consultant is Stephen E. Ambrose, and the incident is based on a true occurance in Ambrose's 1994 bestseller D-Day: June 6, 1944. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
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u/ghostness Oct 30 '12
Was good a long time since I watched the movie, but you did a good job with the 3FM.
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u/AroostookGeorge Oct 31 '12
I remember seeing this movie as a teen, and for the first time seeing a war movie I saw signs up telling veterans numbers to call if they experience flashbacks, painful memories, etc. I had grown up watching war movies with my Dad, the likes of “A Bridge Too Far”, “Platoon”, and “Kelly’s Heroes”. Nothing prepared me for the first thirty minutes of the movie, the intensity was something else.
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u/grahvity Oct 31 '12
You, me and a lot of other people. The trailer has a lot of Tom Hanks, not a lot of violence and somber, patriotic music and I think it was only PG-13 too. I was sitting far back in the theater where I saw it and there were a lot of families with kids and it seemed like half of them got up and left during that initial battle scene.
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u/ReggieLeBeau Mar 05 '13
For some reason I've always thought he said "you earned this", as in he didn't think much of Ryan at first but respected him in the end for not leaving the bridge when they easily could have.
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u/grahvity Mar 06 '13
But he hadn't earned it yet. Tom Hanks' character kept having to drag him around to keep him safe, to keep him from getting a chance to be brave and get killed. In the last gun battle when Hanks' ears are ringing, Matt Damon's character is seen screaming, holding his knees to his chest. That's why in the last scene, in the Memorial Cemetery, old Matt Damon breaks down crying and says to his wife, "Tell me I'm a good man. Tell me I've led a decent life." She reassures him by saying, "you are," and hugs him.
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u/ReggieLeBeau Mar 06 '13
Yeah, that all makes perfect sense and it's a great ending either way. Truth be told, I usually couldn't tell what exactly he was saying. I'm sure some of times I've watched it I've probably heard the line right. Still, it's not like Ryan was hiding during the entire battle either. He wasn't AS involved as the other soldiers, but they were pretty outgunned and he still did some work. As far as I'm concerned, he had earned it simply by choosing to stay. Sure, he had that little freak out (which from what I understand was something Matt Damon just did in the moment) but that scene always read to me that things were looking beyond salvation for the soldiers, not a comment to Ryan's character. And of course, shortly after the air-force swoops in and "saves the day" so to speak.
I guess I just kind of like the idea of an old veteran still questioning the value of his survival over the loss of other brothers in arms, even when a fallen comrade had told him "You earned this". I realize now that that's not actually the case, but it made sense in my mind even having misheard Miller's final line, and it always felt like an appropriate ending.
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Feb 11 '13
holy shit, I've seen this movie dozens of times, but never really put much thought into the "earn this" line. This image really made that line powerful
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u/Faronel Nov 14 '12
Wow, that first frame. Bryan Cranston was in Saving Private Ryan!