Saving Private Ryan

Details

On 6 June 1944, thousands of Allied troops begin landing on the beaches of Normandy as the long-awaited liberation of occupied Europe gets underway. Amongst the American forces landing at Omaha Beach is Captain John Miller and the men of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.

The landing rapidly turns into carnage. German machine-gun positions overlooking the beach cut through the advancing troops, whilst artillery and mortar fire leave the Americans desperately attempting to find whatever protection they can amongst the beach obstacles. Miller eventually manages to gather enough surviving men to break through the German defences and secure their section of the beach.

Elsewhere, the War Department discovers that three members of the Ryan family have been killed in action. Two have died during the Normandy invasion whilst another was killed fighting in the Pacific. A fourth brother, Private James Francis Ryan, is a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division and is believed to be somewhere behind enemy lines in Normandy.

Determined to prevent Mrs Ryan from losing all four of her sons, General George Marshall orders that James be found and returned home. Unfortunately, nobody knows exactly where he is.

Captain Miller is therefore given command of a small group of men and ordered to head inland, locate Ryan and bring him safely back. For Miller and his exhausted soldiers, having survived the horrors of Omaha Beach, risking their lives to save one man they've never met isn't exactly an appealing prospect.

Joining Miller are Sergeant Horvath, Privates Reiben, Jackson, Mellish, Caparzo and medic Wade. Also assigned to the group is Corporal Upham, a relatively inexperienced translator whose knowledge of combat comes considerably more from books than from being shot at.

As the patrol makes its way through occupied Normandy, the men encounter other American units, German positions and the destruction left behind by the invasion. Casualties amongst the group inevitably lead them to question the logic of sacrificing several men simply to save one.

When they eventually locate Ryan, however, another problem emerges. His unit is defending a strategically important bridge from an approaching German force and Ryan has no intention of abandoning his fellow soldiers simply because somebody has decided that his war is over.

Miller must therefore decide how to complete his mission whilst Ryan and the remaining paratroopers prepare to defend the bridge against a considerably larger and better-equipped German force.

Picture & Sound

The picture deliberately avoids the polished appearance normally associated with a big-budget Hollywood production. Colours are heavily desaturated and the image frequently has a harsh, grainy appearance designed to resemble wartime combat photography rather than a conventional feature film.

As a result, anybody expecting the bright colours and pristine appearance of a typical demonstration disc may initially wonder what's gone wrong. Nothing has. The washed-out appearance is intentional and contributes enormously to the film's documentary-like atmosphere.

Detail is generally excellent and the transfer copes remarkably well with some extremely difficult material. The Omaha Beach sequence contains water, smoke, explosions, sand, enormous numbers of moving soldiers and a deliberately frantic camera, yet the image remains impressively stable.

The muted colours also make the occasional flashes of red considerably more disturbing. Blood stands out against the grey-green battlefield with uncomfortable clarity, particularly during the opening assault.

Where this release really excels, however, is the soundtrack. The surround speakers are given a severe workout throughout the film and both the Dolby Digital and DTS versions are breathtaking.

Unfortunately, comparing them requires two separate DVDs. One edition contains the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack whilst the other replaces it with DTS, making a direct comparison a potentially expensive exercise.

Having listened to both, the DTS soundtrack is simply awesome. Separation is superb and there's an additional sense of weight and definition that makes an already astonishing soundtrack even more convincing.

The assault on Omaha Beach is extraordinary. Bullets ping and ricochet around the room, machine-gun fire tears across the soundstage, explosions shake the walls and bodies hit the ground with horribly convincing thuds. Effects appear from practically every direction and it's occasionally difficult not to instinctively react to something passing behind you.

Yet the soundtrack isn't impressive simply because it's loud. Some of its most effective moments occur when Miller temporarily loses his hearing following an explosion and the normal battlefield sound is replaced by a muffled, disorientating silence. The contrast when the full soundtrack suddenly returns is extremely effective.

The quieter sequences also contain plenty of subtle atmospheric detail, whilst dialogue remains clear throughout and John Williams' restrained score is reproduced beautifully.

The Dolby Digital version is hardly second-rate and remains one of the best 5.1 soundtracks I've heard. But if you have suitable DTS equipment and want something to demonstrate exactly what your home cinema system can do, the DTS edition takes some beating.

Menu & Extras

The extras present an awkward choice because the two Region 1 releases don't contain exactly the same material. The Dolby Digital edition includes the excellent Saving Private Ryan - Into the Breach featurette, whilst buyers choosing the DTS version sacrifice the documentary for the improved soundtrack.

And that's a genuine shame because Into the Breach is easily the most important extra included here. If anything, it's more harrowing than the film because we hear from some of the actual people who were there on that historic day.

The film may recreate Omaha Beach with extraordinary realism, but however convincing Spielberg's reconstruction becomes, you're always conscious that you're watching actors and that somebody will eventually shout "Cut!". Listening to veterans describing what actually happened removes that safety net completely.

Both versions also contain a short message from Steven Spielberg, two theatrical trailers, production notes and cast and filmmaker biographies. They're welcome additions but relatively lightweight compared with the documentary.

So which edition should you buy? That's annoyingly difficult. If you're primarily interested in getting the best possible soundtrack, the DTS edition is the obvious choice. If you want the more complete supplementary package, I'd favour the Dolby Digital version.

Personally, I think the documentary is important enough that the Dolby Digital edition probably represents the better all-round package. Its soundtrack is hardly disappointing and Into the Breach deserves to be seen.

Of course, there's always the expensive solution: buy both.

Overall

The opening assault on Omaha Beach must rank as one of the most horrific and convincing battle sequences ever put on film. I've seen plenty of war movies where soldiers are shot, explosions go off and everybody falls down rather neatly. This isn't one of them.

Spielberg throws you directly into the landing craft with Miller and his men and then provides virtually no opportunity to recover. The ramp drops, German machine guns immediately begin cutting men down and within seconds the sea is filled with bodies and blood.

Men drown under the weight of their equipment, lose limbs, desperately attempt to hold their insides together or wander around in shock looking for missing body parts. There are no heroic speeches and very little conventional action-film glamour. For the men landing on that beach, survival frequently appears to be little more than blind luck.

The sequence brings home something that history books and casualty figures can never completely communicate: somebody actually had to get out of those landing craft and walk into that gunfire.

The bullets ping and ricochet around the room with such ferocity that you find yourself instinctively wanting to keep your head down. When the Americans finally manage to break through the defences, there's an enormous sense of relief simply because the ordeal has finally stopped.

Harrowing stuff. And not a trauma counsellor or lawyer in sight.

It also serves as an important reminder of what our grandparents' generation endured. Thousands of British, American, Canadian and other Allied servicemen were killed during the Normandy campaign and the enormous cemeteries scattered across northern France remain testament to the price paid for liberating Europe.

If the opening twenty minutes were the entire film, I'd probably still recommend the DVD. As a recreation of the terror and confusion of combat, it's quite extraordinary and ought to be seen by anybody with an interest in the Second World War.

My problem comes once the film leaves Omaha Beach.

From that point onwards the story becomes a much more conventional American war movie, concentrating entirely on Miller's small group and their mission to locate Ryan. Given that these are American soldiers operating in an American sector, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the film's enormous success inevitably means that its version of D-Day is likely to become the version remembered by many younger viewers.

That's where I find myself slightly uncomfortable. The Normandy invasion was an enormous Allied operation involving American, British, Canadian and numerous other forces, yet if Saving Private Ryan were your only exposure to D-Day you'd be forgiven for assuming the Americans invaded France almost single-handedly.

That's not quite the same historical offence as U-571, which takes an achievement associated with British sailors and hands a fictionalised version to an American crew. Saving Private Ryan doesn't pretend British and Canadian troops landed at Omaha Beach; it simply chooses not to show the other beaches at all.

But I still think the distinction is worth making, particularly when a film becomes as influential as this one. Omaha was only one part of D-Day. British troops were landing at Gold and Sword, Canadians at Juno, Americans at Utah and enormous airborne operations were taking place behind the beaches.

Once you accept that narrow viewpoint, however, the film remains extremely powerful.

Tom Hanks is excellent as Captain Miller, precisely because he doesn't play him as some indestructible Hollywood warrior. Miller is exhausted, frightened and increasingly aware that every decision he makes could result in another of his men dying. The occasional trembling of his hand quietly tells us considerably more than another heroic speech ever could.

The rest of the squad are equally important. Tom Sizemore's Horvath provides Miller with an experienced second-in-command, Barry Pepper's Jackson is a memorable sniper and Giovanni Ribisi's Wade gives the group its conscience until the war rather brutally demonstrates how little value conscience sometimes has on a battlefield.

Jeremy Davies' Upham is likely to divide viewers considerably more. He's inexperienced, terrified and at several crucial moments unable to act. It's frustrating to watch, particularly when his hesitation has horrific consequences, but that's precisely the point. Not everybody suddenly becomes John Wayne simply because somebody hands them a rifle.

The central premise inevitably raises the question the soldiers themselves keep asking: is saving Ryan worth risking the lives of all the men sent to find him?

The film wisely doesn't provide an easy answer. Miller has his orders and carries them out, but each casualty makes the mission increasingly difficult to justify. By the time they actually find Ryan, even he refuses to accept that his life should automatically be considered more valuable than those of the men around him.

I do think the film occasionally spends too long having everybody explore their feelings about the mission. At nearly three hours it's certainly not a short film, and after the astonishing pace of Omaha Beach the middle section can feel decidedly slow.

Then we reach the final battle, which is much more conventionally cinematic. The ruined town, German tanks, improvised defences and desperate last stand provide another spectacular action sequence, although by this stage Spielberg is pulling considerably harder on the emotional and patriotic strings.

There is undoubtedly plenty of Uncle Sam running through the film, particularly towards the end, and occasionally it becomes a little too much for my tastes. But dismissing the entire film because of that would be ridiculous.

Saving Private Ryan is extraordinarily well made, superbly acted and contains some of the most convincing combat footage ever produced. Spielberg's recreation of Omaha Beach alone changed the way modern war films depict combat, stripping away much of the sanitised heroism and replacing it with confusion, fear and appalling violence.

And this is exactly the sort of film that demonstrates why DVD and a decent home cinema system are worth having. The deliberately harsh picture suits the material perfectly and both soundtracks are exceptional, with the DTS edition in particular producing an astonishingly immersive experience.

The frustrating part is having to choose between that DTS soundtrack and the excellent Into the Breach documentary. Given how important the real veterans' testimony is, I'd probably sacrifice DTS and choose the Dolby Digital edition if I could only own one.

Despite my reservations about the film's narrow American perspective and occasional bouts of flag waving, there's simply too much here that's exceptional to dismiss it.

Saving Private Ryan isn't a complete history of D-Day and shouldn't be treated as one. What it does provide is a terrifying glimpse of what one group of men experienced on one particularly bloody section of a much larger battlefield.

Whatever my criticisms, this still needs to be in every serious DVD collection.

And whenever you watch that opening assault and think how realistic it looks, remember one thing: you're watching it from your sofa.

Just thank God that you never there.

Special features

Dolby Digital Version

• Exclusive Message from Steven Spielberg
• Saving Private Ryan - "Into the Breach"
• Two Theatrical Trailers
• Production Notes
• Cast and Filmmakers Biographies

DTS Version

• Exclusive Message from Steven Spielberg
• Two Theatrical Trailers
• Production Notes
• Cast and Filmmakers Biographies