Saving Private Ryan
The movie starts out on a high note with a D-day scene, setting the tone for the rest of the movie. It really disturbed me how many soldiers got killed without even leaving the landing craft. The scene lasts for a while. This scene also introduces most of the main characters. Capt. Miller played by Tom Hanks takes command of the remaining soldiers along the beach and manages to take out the gun positions leading to a victory. But the movie doesn't emphasize the victory but instead focuses on the bodies along the beach. All of the fire fight scenes are incredibly long and realistic. Capt. Miller is given a mission to find Pvt. Ryan and he takes with him eight other soldiers. All of the soldiers are really good characters and surprisingly easy to tell apart.
The search for Ryan becomes more complicated as time progresses and two soldiers die trying to find him. Almost every character points out how risking eight men to send one home is probably a bad move including Ryan himself when they finally find him. The more characters die the more tension there is with the rest of the characters. It gets to the point that it looks like they're going to vent their anger on a German P.O.W. and one of them almost deserts when they don't. They finally find Ryan and he refuses to go home because he wants to stay and defend the bridge he's been defending. Miller decides to stay and protect the bridge with the limited resources they have. What follows is a half an hour long war scene, and results in the death of most of the characters. Finally it gets bad enough that Miller prepares to blow up the bridge but get's mortally wounded before he can do so. Then reinforcements come and save the day.
I really liked this movie. I expected it to be either a patriotic pro war film or an anti war film, but what it was felt more real than either of those expectations. I think it was pretty realistic, and it definitely had some of the most realistic looking gore I've ever seen. The movie is amazing beautiful with it's lighting and choreography. There were some really intense shots at the beginning that put you in the first person perspective a soldier.
The movie doesn't have any definitive answers at the end, and the audience gets left to wonder on the questions raised. The movie has a lot of shocking moments, but the one that got to me the most was at the end, when Upham, an inexperienced soldier finally takes action and holds several Germans at gun point. He then proceeds to shoot the German he defended against the other eight soldiers earlier in the film, seemingly without provocation. I thought it was a very intriguing movie, and i enjoyed it
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