---This week I got together with Austin K and Nick Petsche to watch Saving Private Ryan. I had seen bits and pieces of this movie and I had liked those so we thought it would be good to see the whole movie.
---The movie starts as a WW2 veteran visits a memorial, who we assume is James Ryan. He is with his family and as he goes through the memorial he falls to his knees crying with all the memories. Then it jumps back in time to D day. It shows Captain Miller landing on Omaha beach with his troops. The soldiers that land on the beach have all kinds of trouble due to the Germans who are dug in and in well fortified machine gun nests. Captain Miller survives the initial landing and rallies a few men who take out a nest and continue to move forward. They push forward and take out numerous Germans and many nests. At the end of the day they have taken the beach and the rest of the troops arrive.
--I think that this was really graphic but I liked the action that went along with it.
---After they are victorious it flashes back to the United States where the army was sending out all of the telegrams to the families of the troops that were KIA. One of the people there brings to George Marshall’s attention that three of the four Ryan brothers had died and that their mother would get all three at the same time. He decides that the fourth brother needed to be brought back before something could happen to him too. They go to the mother’s home and tell her about her sons.
--I believe that this was a very honorable decision on Marshall’s part and he was really nice to want to bring Ryan back.
---Miller gets orders from his battalion commander to go and find Ryan. He gets six other men and a translator that knows French and German. They have no idea where Ryan is due to the 101st airborne being scattered all over. They move out to a town where Caparzo is injured by a sniper after they encounter a French family hiding in a house. Private Jackson moves across to the street and kills the sniper up in the tower but Caparzo died. They found an officer in the same town and asked them if they knew where Ryan was and they said that they had him. It turns out that it is a Private Ryan but not the right one and they move on.
--I thought it was pretty funny that they messed up and how they basically messed with the guy.
---They find a crashed plane and a bunch of wounded at the rally point and find out that the plane crashed because it had too much weight because they were trying to protect a general. Because of this the plane had scattered the paratroopers including Ryan. They go through a bad of dog tags to see if Ryan was KIA or still missing and the medic gets mad at them because they weren’t recognizing the significance of them. Capt Miller kinda goes crazy and just starts yelling that if anyone knew Ryan. One man says that he knew a guy who was his good friend. The friend tells him that Ryan is defending a bridge in Ramelle.
--I thought they were really dumb to make bets and joke about him being in the dog tag pile and I would have been right beside the medic in telling them to stop.
---On the way there they find a German machine gun nest near an old radar station. They decide to take it out and work their way up the hill and kill everyone except one German. Their medic is fatally wounded and he dies. They made the last remaining German, who was taken prisoner, dig graves for the dead. They nickname him Steamboat Willie and they want to kill him but Upham doesn’t want him to be killed and pleads with the other soldiers. They finally agree to blindfold him and tell him to walk so far until he could take it off and he would surrender himself to the next Allied patrol. Because Miller let him live the men question his judgment and they were threatening to pull the unit apart so Miller reveals his origins in which they were betting on.
--I thought that they were nice to let him go but I would not have been content with him just leaving to go back to the Germans.
---When they get to Ramelle they find three paratroopers who help them to take out a German recon unit. After this they find out that one of these troopers was the Private Ryan that they were looking for. They go to the bridge and link up with the rest of Ryan’s squad. Miller tells him about his brothers and he says that he doesn’t deserve to go home and that he wants to stay and Miller decides to stay with him. They go over their resources and set up defenses for upcoming battles. They make sticky bombs and lay explosives in order to take out tanks that are moving that way. They make it so that the tanks will come down the main street creating a bottleneck.
--I thought that they were extremely brave to think that they would be able to take out a tank and all those soldiers.
---They set up defenses with a sniper and a machine gun in a bell tower, another machine gun in a flanking position, and numerous other positions for the troops to hide. The plan was to try and take out the tanks and fall back as necessary until the last man alive would blow the bridge if they were going to lose the battle. The Germans come with two Panzers, two Tigers, a Flak 38 cannon, 50 men, and some armored vehicles. They fight and inflict heavy casualties on the Germans but many of them are killed including the three in the bell tower. Steamboat Willie is in this unit and he kills two men and lets Upham live because he had saved him earlier. Three of the tanks are destroyed and a lot of the infantry is killed. They pull back across the bridge and Miller goes to get the detonation device and is shot by Willie. Just as the last tank goes toward the bridge a P51 comes and destroy the tank. Upham reveals himself and holds up the rest of the Germans and kills Willie.
---Reinforcements arrive to take their place at the bridge and relieve the crew there. Captain Miller dies and tells Ryan that he earned his way home and then it goes back to the present where Ryan is at Millers grave and his wife confirms that he was a good man.
---I really liked this movie. It had a storyline that was a little confusing for me but that is what I like the best. It was also very graphic but it shows the situation the best when it is like this. I liked the plot on the movie and that it showed this, I also like how it portrays how the men in the war pulled together to get what needed to be done done.
Captain Miller in the middle and Ryan to the right
Them taking out a Tiger tank
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