Saving Private Ryan

Director: Stephen Spielberg

Produced by: Stephen Spielberg & Ian Bryce

Staring: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, and Tom Sizemore

Saving Private Ryan starts with a flashback of the Normandy invasion. Although this part of the film is not what the film is truly about it seems to hold the most significance. When the door of the transport opens the German machine gunners begin firing. The first few rows of men in every transport are instantly shot up. The rest of the men crawl over the mangled bodies or jump off the side of the transports. Crawling over the bodies meant machine gun fire was a very real threat. On the other hand, jumping over the side of the transports only meant drowning and being shot with stray bullets. Once on to the beach the lucky ones found cover, and a face full of lead to the not so quick-witted.

To me, the invasion resembled an American Gladiator episode. One party had to run through an obstacle course while being shot at by a person firing a tennis ball machine gun. Replace tennis ball machine gun with .50 caliber machine gun and throw in a few mortars and you got yourself the Normandy invasion.

The rest of the movie consisted of a group of soldiers lead by Capt. John Miller (AKA Forest Gump, AKA Tom Hanks, AKA that guy from the movie BIG) trying to find a soldier who lost his three brothers on D-Day and is going to be returned to his mother. They team together to help defend a French bridge from German control. Sadly enough everyone in the original group that was trying to rescue Private Ryan ended up dying. The movie asks the moral question of how much one human life is truly worth.

This film is a great film to show the terror of war and the acts some people will do to defend their own cause.