Podcast 57: Saving Private Ryan (1998)

April 13, 2022 Jon S Movies, Podcasting 01:42:4397MB 0 Comments
Saving Private Ryan

The 3 Guys Podcast

Recorded on 3/31/2022

In the Last Great Invasion of the Last Great War, The Greatest Danger for Eight Men was Saving One. In this episode we review the WWII based movie, Saving Private Ryan (released 1998) starring Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Ted Danson, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillion, Ryan Hurst and a bunch of other people. This week we welcome back our special guest Gerard. WARNING: There will be SPOILERS!

The 3 Guys Rating

4.3/5
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Notes From The Show

  • Quick Synopsis

  • Released: July 24, 1998

    Directed By:  Steven Spielberg

    Screenplay By:  Robert Rodat

    Stars: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Ted Danson, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillion, Ryan Hurst and a bunch of other people.

    Plot: Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

    Tagline: In the Last Great Invasion of the Last Great War, The Greatest Danger for Eight Men was Saving… One.

    How did this movie do
    Budget: $70 Million
    Box office: $482 Million

  • Casting

    • Steven Spielberg cast Matt Damon as Private Ryan because he wanted an unknown actor with an All-American look. He did not know Damon would win an Oscar for Good Will Hunting (1997) and become an overnight star before the film was released.

    • All the principal actors, except for Matt Damon, underwent several days of grueling army training. Damon was spared so that the other actors would resent him and would convey that feeling in their performances.

    • Tom Sizemore was battling drug addiction during production. Steven Spielberg gave him an ultimatum that he would be blood tested on the set every day of filming, and if he failed the test once, he would be fired and the part of Sergeant Horvath would be recast and re-shot with someone else, even if it was at the end of production. Sizemore agreed and managed to pass all of his tests. Unfortunately, he would relapse into drug abuse several times later in his career. Ironically he played a DEA agent in Point Break (1991).

    • The role of Private Caparzo was written just for Vin Diesel, after Steven Spielberg saw Diesel’s independent film Strays (1997), which was also his directorial, writing, producing and lead acting debut. Vin Diesel was paid $100,000 for the role of Private Caparzo, when he was still a little-known actor.

    • Billy Bob Thornton turned down the role of Sergeant Horvath, because he did not want to film the Normandy beach scenes, due to a phobia of water.

    • Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford were both considered for the role of Captain Miller, before Steven Spielberg decided on casting Tom Hanks.

  • Awards

    • The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards at the 71st annual ceremony, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, and Best Original Screenplay. The film won five of these, including Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Film Editing, and Best Director for Spielberg, his second win in that category.

    • Lost the Best Picture award to Shakespeare in Love

    • The film also won the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Director, the BAFTA Award for Special Effects and Sound, the Directors Guild of America Award, a Grammy Award for Best Film Soundtrack, the Producers Guild of America Golden Laurel Award, and the Saturn Award for Best Action, Adventure, or Thriller Film.

  • WWII

    • The draft, or more accurately, selective military conscription, was the primary means by which men were inducted into the American armed forces during World War II. The Selective Service Act of 1940 established the first peacetime military conscription in the nation’s history and provided the blueprint by which men were drafted for the next thirty years.

    • The draft made an important contribution to victory in World War II. Selective Service registered 49 million men, selected 19 million, and inducted 10.1 million into an armed force of approximately 15 million.

    • Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region.

    • But thanks in part to the massive influx of troops and equipment, D-Day marked a decisive turning point in the war. Less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender.

    • Along with the Americans were 61,715 British Allied liberators and 21,400 Canadian troops. In total, 156,115 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.

    • German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were documented for at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. Of the 4,414 Allied deaths on June 6th, 2,501 were Americans and 1,913 were Allies.

    • D Day was the largest amphibious assault in history.

    • Forces landed on five code-named beaches.

    • The first infantry wave at Omaha experienced the worst carnage of the D-Day campaign, with large sections of entire companies killed or drowned before ever reaching the shore or firing a shot. In the end, U.S. forces suffered 2,400 casualties on Omaha Beach.

    • On June 6, shortly after midnight, 2,200 Allied bombers attacked German positions to soften the landing zones for amphibious troops. One of the reasons Omaha Beach was so bloody is that thick cloud coverage in that area rendered the bombing campaign at Omaha ineffective, leaving enemy infrastructure—and guns—in perfect working order.

    • After the aerial bombardment, but before the beach landings, 24,000 American, Canadian, and British paratroopers parachuted in behind enemy lines to secure the beaches’ exits. The same heavy cloud coverage that hindered the Omaha Beach bombardment also foiled the paratroopers. Many units ended up far away from their intended landing zones amid the chaos.

    • The operation led to the liberation of Paris.

    • Among those buried at the Normandy American Cemetery are 33 sets of brothers who were buried side by side. A father and son are also buried there together.

    • On May 7, 1945—less than one year after D-Day—Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

  • Trivia

    • The two “German” soldiers who are shot trying to surrender were speaking Czech. They were saying, “Please don’t shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn’t kill anyone, I am Czech!” They were members of what the Germans called Ost [East] Battalions, men, mostly Czech and Polish, taken prisoner in eastern European countries invaded by Germany and forced into the German army.

    • The Omaha Beach scene cost $11 million to shoot, and involved up to 1,000 extras, some of whom were members of the Irish Army Reserve. Of those extras, 20-30 of them were amputees, issued with prosthetic limbs, to play soldiers who had their limbs blown off.

    • The cast endured a grueling, week-long course at boot camp instructed by technical advisor Dale Dye. Tom Hanks, who had previously been trained by Dye for the Vietnam war scenes in Forrest Gump (1994), was the only one of them who knew it would be a hard and uncompromising experience: “The other guys, I think, were expecting something like camping in the woods, and maybe learning things while sitting around the campfire.”

    • Many veterans of D-Day congratulated director Steven Spielberg on the film’s authenticity, as did James Doohan, who is best known for playing Scotty in Star Trek (1966). Doohan lost the middle finger of his right hand and was wounded in the leg during the war. Also, he participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, at Juno Beach, where the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division led the attack (shot 6 times and lost his finger). He commended Spielberg for not leaving out any gory details.

    • The Omaha Beach scene was shot in the south of Ireland, in an area called Curracloe.

    • Steven Spielberg is on record as saying that even if the film had received an NC-17 rating, he would have released it uncut anyway.

    • The Omaha Beach battle was filmed in sequence over a four-week period, moving the action up the beach shot by shot and day by day. Steven Spielberg claims that none of it was storyboarded in advance.

    • Matt Damon ad-libbed the story he tells, towards the end of the film, about spying on his brother in the barn with the ugly girl. As described in Peter Bart’s book “The Gross,” the speech was rambling and not particularly funny or interesting, but the crew decided that’s why it worked; it was true to an unformed kid like Ryan, fated to be at the center of this incredible operation. Steven Spielberg liked it so much he decided to leave it in the film.

    • Cinemas were instructed to up the volume when they showed the film, as the sound effects play such a crucial part in its overall effect.

    • Steven Spielberg claimed that he considered the film a passion project as a gift to his aging father, a World War II veteran. He further claimed that he made the picture against his commercial instincts, believing there would not be a wide audience for a World War II movie with graphic violence, and was pleasantly surprised when it became a blockbuster hit.

    • In 2006 Tom Hanks was inducted into the US Army’s Ranger Hall of Fame as an honorary member, largely thanks to his portrayal of Captain John Miller.

    • This film losing out to Shakespeare in Love (1998) for Best Picture Oscar is often named as one of the greatest Oscar controversies in the history of the award show. Many industry people attributed the latter’s win to its producer Harvey Weinstein incessantly lobbying for his movie with Academy voters, while attacking this film for its historical inaccuracies.

    • The Department of Veterans Affairs set up a special 800 number to help the hundreds of former soldiers who were traumatized after seeing the film.

    • Two of the landing craft used in the Omaha Beach scenes were actually used in World War II.

    • Writer Robert Rodat first came up with the film’s story in 1994, when he saw a monument dedicated to four sons of Agnes Allison of Port Carbon, PA. The brothers were killed in the American Civil War. Rodat decided to write a similar story set during World War II. The script was submitted to producer Mark Gordon, who then handed it to Tom Hanks. It was finally given to Steven Spielberg, who decided to direct. The film’s premise is very loosely based on the real-life case of the Niland brothers.

    • Gunfire sound effects were recorded from actual gunfire with live ammunition fired from authentic period weapons, recorded at a live fire machine gun range near Atlanta, GA. The range is owned by a weapons manufacturer.

    • Forty barrels of fake blood were utilized in the opening battle scene.

    • Jackson killing the German sniper by firing a shot through the man’s scope and into his eye was based on a true incident, though not in World War II and not by a Pvt. Jackson. It was accomplished by US Marine GySgt Carlos Hathcock during the Vietnam War. Hathcock was a sniper who was being fired at by a concealed North Vietnamese Army (NVA) sniper. He finally managed to catch a glimpse of the man’s sniperscope, and put a round through it, killing him. The incident pictured in this film is a tribute to Hathcock, who has been regarded as one of the US military’s top snipers.

    • Barry Pepper improvised the line “God gave me a special gift, made me a fine instrument of warfare”.

    • Steven Spielberg donated an undisclosed amount of money to build a theater at America’s National D-Day Memorial in honor of his father, who flew Army Air Corps missions and was a radio operator in Burma during World War II.

    • The first “DreamWorks Pictures” film to cross the $100 -million mark.

    • Paul Giamatti says “The streets have been quiet for about 45 minutes” around the 45-minute mark in the movie.

    • During their night in Neuville, Upham is surprised when Capt. Miller identifies a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson (“War educates the senses…”). This is an early clue to Miller’s peacetime occupation as an English teacher.

    • Graffiti on the wall of a ruined French village in Neuville reads, ‘Pétain est un traître’ (Pétain is a traitor). Philippe Pétain served as head of Vichy France and was seen as a Nazi collaborator.

    • The opening Omaha Beach sequence used up 17,000 individual bullet squibs.

    • Some viewers commonly mistake “Steamboat Willie” for the Waffen SS soldier who stabbed Mellish as (when it zooms out) he looks almost exactly like the soldier. Also, since Willie and this SS soldier wear the same clothes during the battle, they look similar from certain angles because of this. Another thing to note is that the soldier doesn’t take his helmet with him when he leaves the house after killing Mellish and since Steamboat Willie isn’t wearing one when he runs up to start shooting with the rest of his squad, this further contributes to the fact that some fans mix them up. Further difference can be seen when the SS soldier exited the house; he looked different than Steamboat Willie. One can further tell the difference between Willie and the SS soldier by the fact that Willie is wearing a Wehrmacht uniform tunic under the camouflage cover faint “Prussian”-type lines on his collar) while the SS soldier is wearing an SS tunic top identifiable by the SS emblems on his collars.

    • Steamboat Willie is the man seen catching and throwing back a grenade hurled at him by American troops during the defense of the bunker, and also since he only carries rifle ammunition pouches (rather than a machine gunner’s webbing featuring a pistol and other pouches) he was certainly not the man who killed medic Irwin Wade. During the grenade fight he is seen wearing a Stahlhelm and a neck-toque of some kind.

    • According to the script, the German soldier who Upham shoots at the end of the film is indeed “Steamboat Willie,” thus teaching Upham a lesson about compassion for the enemy during war.

    • CAMEO: Janusz Kaminski – The film’s cinematographer appears as a documentary filmmaker.

    • As the German soldier stabs Mellish to death, he says, “Gib’ auf, du hast keine Chance! Lass’ es uns beenden! Es ist einfacher für dich, viel einfacher. Du wirst sehen, es ist gleich vorbei.” This translates to, “Give up, you don’t stand a chance! Let’s end this here! It will be easier for you, much easier. You’ll see it will be over quickly.” The words are spoken in accent-free German.

    • Out of the eight men sent to find Private Ryan, only two survive in the end: Private Richard Reiben (Edward Burns) and Corporal Timothy P. Upham (Jeremy Davies).

    • In the last scene, where old Ryan is in the cemetery, there is a tomb behind Miller’s, with a black mark on it. It is a reference to Jackson, who had a black mark on one of his fingers.

    • In Max Allan Collins’s novelization of the screenplay, Ryan calls his wife “Alice” in the final scene in the cemetery. This suggests that after going home to Iowa, Ryan may have ended up marrying his brother Danny’s girlfriend Alice Jardine, the girl who “took a nosedive from the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down.”

    • When Miller spares Steamboat Willie, he states to his men about his justified merciful act by saying, “Just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel”, foreshadows his death at the end when Steamboat Willie kills him.

    • Movie Body Count: 255.

Released: July 24, 1998

Directed By:  Steven Spielberg

Screenplay By:  Robert Rodat

Stars: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Ted Danson, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillion, Ryan Hurst and a bunch of other people.

Plot: Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

Tagline: In the Last Great Invasion of the Last Great War, The Greatest Danger for Eight Men was Saving… One.

How did this movie do
Budget: $70 Million
Box office: $482 Million

  • Steven Spielberg cast Matt Damon as Private Ryan because he wanted an unknown actor with an All-American look. He did not know Damon would win an Oscar for Good Will Hunting (1997) and become an overnight star before the film was released.

  • All the principal actors, except for Matt Damon, underwent several days of grueling army training. Damon was spared so that the other actors would resent him and would convey that feeling in their performances.

  • Tom Sizemore was battling drug addiction during production. Steven Spielberg gave him an ultimatum that he would be blood tested on the set every day of filming, and if he failed the test once, he would be fired and the part of Sergeant Horvath would be recast and re-shot with someone else, even if it was at the end of production. Sizemore agreed and managed to pass all of his tests. Unfortunately, he would relapse into drug abuse several times later in his career. Ironically he played a DEA agent in Point Break (1991).

  • The role of Private Caparzo was written just for Vin Diesel, after Steven Spielberg saw Diesel’s independent film Strays (1997), which was also his directorial, writing, producing and lead acting debut. Vin Diesel was paid $100,000 for the role of Private Caparzo, when he was still a little-known actor.

  • Billy Bob Thornton turned down the role of Sergeant Horvath, because he did not want to film the Normandy beach scenes, due to a phobia of water.

  • Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford were both considered for the role of Captain Miller, before Steven Spielberg decided on casting Tom Hanks.
  • The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards at the 71st annual ceremony, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, and Best Original Screenplay. The film won five of these, including Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Film Editing, and Best Director for Spielberg, his second win in that category.

  • Lost the Best Picture award to Shakespeare in Love

  • The film also won the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Director, the BAFTA Award for Special Effects and Sound, the Directors Guild of America Award, a Grammy Award for Best Film Soundtrack, the Producers Guild of America Golden Laurel Award, and the Saturn Award for Best Action, Adventure, or Thriller Film.
  • The draft, or more accurately, selective military conscription, was the primary means by which men were inducted into the American armed forces during World War II. The Selective Service Act of 1940 established the first peacetime military conscription in the nation’s history and provided the blueprint by which men were drafted for the next thirty years.

  • The draft made an important contribution to victory in World War II. Selective Service registered 49 million men, selected 19 million, and inducted 10.1 million into an armed force of approximately 15 million.

  • Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region.

  • But thanks in part to the massive influx of troops and equipment, D-Day marked a decisive turning point in the war. Less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender.

  • Along with the Americans were 61,715 British Allied liberators and 21,400 Canadian troops. In total, 156,115 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.

  • German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were documented for at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. Of the 4,414 Allied deaths on June 6th, 2,501 were Americans and 1,913 were Allies.

  • D Day was the largest amphibious assault in history.

  • Forces landed on five code-named beaches.

  • The first infantry wave at Omaha experienced the worst carnage of the D-Day campaign, with large sections of entire companies killed or drowned before ever reaching the shore or firing a shot. In the end, U.S. forces suffered 2,400 casualties on Omaha Beach.

  • On June 6, shortly after midnight, 2,200 Allied bombers attacked German positions to soften the landing zones for amphibious troops. One of the reasons Omaha Beach was so bloody is that thick cloud coverage in that area rendered the bombing campaign at Omaha ineffective, leaving enemy infrastructure—and guns—in perfect working order.

  • After the aerial bombardment, but before the beach landings, 24,000 American, Canadian, and British paratroopers parachuted in behind enemy lines to secure the beaches’ exits. The same heavy cloud coverage that hindered the Omaha Beach bombardment also foiled the paratroopers. Many units ended up far away from their intended landing zones amid the chaos.

  • The operation led to the liberation of Paris.

  • Among those buried at the Normandy American Cemetery are 33 sets of brothers who were buried side by side. A father and son are also buried there together.

  • On May 7, 1945—less than one year after D-Day—Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
  • The two “German” soldiers who are shot trying to surrender were speaking Czech. They were saying, “Please don’t shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn’t kill anyone, I am Czech!” They were members of what the Germans called Ost [East] Battalions, men, mostly Czech and Polish, taken prisoner in eastern European countries invaded by Germany and forced into the German army.

  • The Omaha Beach scene cost $11 million to shoot, and involved up to 1,000 extras, some of whom were members of the Irish Army Reserve. Of those extras, 20-30 of them were amputees, issued with prosthetic limbs, to play soldiers who had their limbs blown off.

  • The cast endured a grueling, week-long course at boot camp instructed by technical advisor Dale Dye. Tom Hanks, who had previously been trained by Dye for the Vietnam war scenes in Forrest Gump (1994), was the only one of them who knew it would be a hard and uncompromising experience: “The other guys, I think, were expecting something like camping in the woods, and maybe learning things while sitting around the campfire.”

  • Many veterans of D-Day congratulated director Steven Spielberg on the film’s authenticity, as did James Doohan, who is best known for playing Scotty in Star Trek (1966). Doohan lost the middle finger of his right hand and was wounded in the leg during the war. Also, he participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, at Juno Beach, where the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division led the attack (shot 6 times and lost his finger). He commended Spielberg for not leaving out any gory details.

  • The Omaha Beach scene was shot in the south of Ireland, in an area called Curracloe.

  • Steven Spielberg is on record as saying that even if the film had received an NC-17 rating, he would have released it uncut anyway.

  • The Omaha Beach battle was filmed in sequence over a four-week period, moving the action up the beach shot by shot and day by day. Steven Spielberg claims that none of it was storyboarded in advance.

  • Matt Damon ad-libbed the story he tells, towards the end of the film, about spying on his brother in the barn with the ugly girl. As described in Peter Bart’s book “The Gross,” the speech was rambling and not particularly funny or interesting, but the crew decided that’s why it worked; it was true to an unformed kid like Ryan, fated to be at the center of this incredible operation. Steven Spielberg liked it so much he decided to leave it in the film.

  • Cinemas were instructed to up the volume when they showed the film, as the sound effects play such a crucial part in its overall effect.

  • Steven Spielberg claimed that he considered the film a passion project as a gift to his aging father, a World War II veteran. He further claimed that he made the picture against his commercial instincts, believing there would not be a wide audience for a World War II movie with graphic violence, and was pleasantly surprised when it became a blockbuster hit.

  • In 2006 Tom Hanks was inducted into the US Army’s Ranger Hall of Fame as an honorary member, largely thanks to his portrayal of Captain John Miller.

  • This film losing out to Shakespeare in Love (1998) for Best Picture Oscar is often named as one of the greatest Oscar controversies in the history of the award show. Many industry people attributed the latter’s win to its producer Harvey Weinstein incessantly lobbying for his movie with Academy voters, while attacking this film for its historical inaccuracies.

  • The Department of Veterans Affairs set up a special 800 number to help the hundreds of former soldiers who were traumatized after seeing the film.

  • Two of the landing craft used in the Omaha Beach scenes were actually used in World War II.

  • Writer Robert Rodat first came up with the film’s story in 1994, when he saw a monument dedicated to four sons of Agnes Allison of Port Carbon, PA. The brothers were killed in the American Civil War. Rodat decided to write a similar story set during World War II. The script was submitted to producer Mark Gordon, who then handed it to Tom Hanks. It was finally given to Steven Spielberg, who decided to direct. The film’s premise is very loosely based on the real-life case of the Niland brothers.

  • Gunfire sound effects were recorded from actual gunfire with live ammunition fired from authentic period weapons, recorded at a live fire machine gun range near Atlanta, GA. The range is owned by a weapons manufacturer.

  • Forty barrels of fake blood were utilized in the opening battle scene.

  • Jackson killing the German sniper by firing a shot through the man’s scope and into his eye was based on a true incident, though not in World War II and not by a Pvt. Jackson. It was accomplished by US Marine GySgt Carlos Hathcock during the Vietnam War. Hathcock was a sniper who was being fired at by a concealed North Vietnamese Army (NVA) sniper. He finally managed to catch a glimpse of the man’s sniperscope, and put a round through it, killing him. The incident pictured in this film is a tribute to Hathcock, who has been regarded as one of the US military’s top snipers.

  • Barry Pepper improvised the line “God gave me a special gift, made me a fine instrument of warfare”.

  • Steven Spielberg donated an undisclosed amount of money to build a theater at America’s National D-Day Memorial in honor of his father, who flew Army Air Corps missions and was a radio operator in Burma during World War II.

  • The first “DreamWorks Pictures” film to cross the $100 -million mark.

  • Paul Giamatti says “The streets have been quiet for about 45 minutes” around the 45-minute mark in the movie.

  • During their night in Neuville, Upham is surprised when Capt. Miller identifies a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson (“War educates the senses…”). This is an early clue to Miller’s peacetime occupation as an English teacher.

  • Graffiti on the wall of a ruined French village in Neuville reads, ‘Pétain est un traître’ (Pétain is a traitor). Philippe Pétain served as head of Vichy France and was seen as a Nazi collaborator.

  • The opening Omaha Beach sequence used up 17,000 individual bullet squibs.

  • Some viewers commonly mistake “Steamboat Willie” for the Waffen SS soldier who stabbed Mellish as (when it zooms out) he looks almost exactly like the soldier. Also, since Willie and this SS soldier wear the same clothes during the battle, they look similar from certain angles because of this. Another thing to note is that the soldier doesn’t take his helmet with him when he leaves the house after killing Mellish and since Steamboat Willie isn’t wearing one when he runs up to start shooting with the rest of his squad, this further contributes to the fact that some fans mix them up. Further difference can be seen when the SS soldier exited the house; he looked different than Steamboat Willie. One can further tell the difference between Willie and the SS soldier by the fact that Willie is wearing a Wehrmacht uniform tunic under the camouflage cover faint “Prussian”-type lines on his collar) while the SS soldier is wearing an SS tunic top identifiable by the SS emblems on his collars.

  • Steamboat Willie is the man seen catching and throwing back a grenade hurled at him by American troops during the defense of the bunker, and also since he only carries rifle ammunition pouches (rather than a machine gunner’s webbing featuring a pistol and other pouches) he was certainly not the man who killed medic Irwin Wade. During the grenade fight he is seen wearing a Stahlhelm and a neck-toque of some kind.

  • According to the script, the German soldier who Upham shoots at the end of the film is indeed “Steamboat Willie,” thus teaching Upham a lesson about compassion for the enemy during war.

  • CAMEO: Janusz Kaminski – The film’s cinematographer appears as a documentary filmmaker.

  • As the German soldier stabs Mellish to death, he says, “Gib’ auf, du hast keine Chance! Lass’ es uns beenden! Es ist einfacher für dich, viel einfacher. Du wirst sehen, es ist gleich vorbei.” This translates to, “Give up, you don’t stand a chance! Let’s end this here! It will be easier for you, much easier. You’ll see it will be over quickly.” The words are spoken in accent-free German.

  • Out of the eight men sent to find Private Ryan, only two survive in the end: Private Richard Reiben (Edward Burns) and Corporal Timothy P. Upham (Jeremy Davies).

  • In the last scene, where old Ryan is in the cemetery, there is a tomb behind Miller’s, with a black mark on it. It is a reference to Jackson, who had a black mark on one of his fingers.

  • In Max Allan Collins’s novelization of the screenplay, Ryan calls his wife “Alice” in the final scene in the cemetery. This suggests that after going home to Iowa, Ryan may have ended up marrying his brother Danny’s girlfriend Alice Jardine, the girl who “took a nosedive from the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down.”

  • When Miller spares Steamboat Willie, he states to his men about his justified merciful act by saying, “Just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel”, foreshadows his death at the end when Steamboat Willie kills him.

  • Movie Body Count: 255.

About The Movie From IMDB

Saving Private Ryan Drama, War | July 24, 1998 (United States) 8.6
Director: Steven SpielbergWriter: Robert RodatStars: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom SizemoreSummary: Opening with the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion under Cpt. Miller fight ashore to secure a beachhead. Amidst the fighting, two brothers are killed in action. Earlier in New Guinea, a third brother is KIA. Their mother, Mrs. Ryan, is to receive all three of the grave telegrams on the same day. The United States Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, is given an opportunity to alleviate some of her grief when he learns of a fourth brother, Private James Ryan, and decides to send out 8 men (Cpt. Miller and select members from 2nd Rangers) to find him and bring him back home to his mother... ?J.Zelman

Photos


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Videos


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Cast

Tom Hanks
...
Captain Miller
Matt Damon
...
Private Ryan
Tom Sizemore
...
Sergeant Horvath
Edward Burns
...
Private Reiben
Barry Pepper
...
Private Jackson
Adam Goldberg
...
Private Mellish
Vin Diesel
...
Private Caparzo
Giovanni Ribisi
...
T
Jeremy Davies
...
Corporal Upham
Ted Danson
...
Captain Hamill
Paul Giamatti
...
Sergeant Hill
Dennis Farina
...
Lieutenant Colonel Anderson
Joerg Stadler
...
Steamboat Willie
Max Martini
...
Corporal Henderson
Dylan Bruno
...
Toynbe
Daniel Cerqueira
...
Weller
Demetri Goritsas
...
Parker
Ian Porter
...
Trask

See full cast >>
Countries: United StatesLanguages: English, French, German, CzechBudget: $70,000,000 (estimated)
Source: imdb.com
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8.6
Saving Private Ryan Drama, War | July 24, 1998 (United States)
Director: Steven SpielbergWriter: Robert RodatStars: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore
Summary: Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.
Countries: United StatesLanguages: English, French, German, Czech
Source: imdb.comDisclaimer: This plugin has been coded to automatically quote data from imdb.com. Not available for any other purpose. All showing data have a link to imdb.com. The user is responsible for any other use or change codes.

Quotes

[weakly mutters something after being mortally wounded]

Private Ryan: [leans in closer] What, sir?

Captain Miller: James, earn this... earn it.

Mellish: Fucked up beyond all recognition.

Upham: FUBAR.

Captain Miller: He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb.

Captain Miller: James Francis Ryan of Iowa?

Private Ryan: Yes, sir. Paton, Iowa, that's correct. What is this about?

Captain Miller: Your brothers were killed in combat.

Private Ryan: Which - Which ones?

Captain Miller: All of them.

[Ryan pauses in shock and then begins to cry]

Captain Miller: I'm a schoolteacher. I teach English composition... in this little town called Adley, Pennsylvania. The last eleven years, I've been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was a coach of the baseball team in the springtime. Back home, I tell people what I do for a living and they think well, now that figures. But over here, it's a big, a big mystery. So, I guess I've changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much my wife is even going to recognize me, whenever it is that I get back to her. And how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today. Ah, Ryan. I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care. The man means nothing to me. It's just a name. But if... You know if going to Rumelle and finding him so that he can go home. If that earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that's my mission.

[to Private Reiben]

Captain Miller: You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right. I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.

[Being told he can go home]

Private Ryan: Hell, these guys deserve to go home as much as I do. They've fought just as hard.

Captain Miller: Is that what I'm supposed to tell your mother when she gets another folded American flag?

Private Ryan: You can tell her that when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left. And that there was no way I was deserting them. I think she'd understand that.

Gen. George C. Marshall: My dear Mrs Ryan: It's with the most profound sense of joy that I write to inform you your son, Private James Ryan, is well and, at this very moment, on his way home from European battlefields. Reports from the front indicate James did his duty in combat with great courage and steadfast dedication, even after he was informed of the tragic loss your family has suffered in this great campaign to rid the world of tyranny and oppresion. I take great pleasure in joining the Secretary of War, the men and women of the U.S. Army, and the citizens of a grateful nation in wishing you good health and many years of happiness with James at your side. Nothing, not even the safe return of a beloved son, can compensate you, or the thousands of other American families, who have suffered great loss in this tragic war. I might share with you some words which have sustained me through long, dark nights of peril, loss, and heartache. And I quote: "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom." -Abraham Lincoln. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, George C. Marshall, General, Chief of Staff.

Parker: [firing machine gun] I'm out of .30 Caliber!

Private Jackson: [lining shots] Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.

[Fires rifle twice]

Private Jackson: My goodness and my fortress... my high tower and my Deliverer.

[Fires rifle]

Private Jackson: My shield, and he in whom I trust.

[Fires rifle, then to his rifle]

Private Jackson: Here you go baby.

[Fires rifle few more times. Notices a tank has spotted them]

Private Jackson: Parker, get down!

Sergeant Horvath: I don't know. Part of me thinks the kid's right. He asks what he's done to deserve this. He wants to stay here, fine. Let's leave him and go home. But then another part of me thinks, what if by some miracle we stay, then actually make it out of here. Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess. Like you said, Captain, maybe we do that, we all earn the right to go home.

Private Jackson: Sir... I have an opinion on this matter.

Captain Miller: Well, by all means, share it with the squad.

Private Jackson: Well, from my way of thinking, sir, this entire mission is a serious misallocation of valuable military resources.

Captain Miller: Yeah. Go on.

Private Jackson: Well, it seems to me, sir, that God gave me a special gift, made me a fine instrument of warfare.

Captain Miller: Reiben, pay attention. Now, this is the way to gripe. Continue, Jackson.

Private Jackson: Well, what I mean by that, sir, is... if you was to put me and this here sniper rifle anywhere up to and including one mile of Adolf Hitler with a clear line of sight, sir... pack your bags, fellas, war's over. Amen.

Private Reiben: Oh, that's brilliant, bumpkin. Hey, so, Captain, what about you? I mean, you don't gripe at all?

Captain Miller: I don't gripe to *you*, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that as a Ranger.

Private Reiben: I'm sorry, sir, but uh... let's say you weren't a captain, or maybe I was a major. What would you say then?

Captain Miller: Well, in that case... I'd say, "This is an excellent mission, sir, with an extremely valuable objective, sir, worthy of my best efforts, sir. Moreover... I feel heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan and am willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men - especially you, Reiben - to ease her suffering."

Mellish: [chuckles] He's good.

Private Caparzo: I love him.

[they make mocking kissy-faces at each other]

Captain Miller: You see, when... when you end up killing one of your men, you see, you tell yourself it happened so you could save the lives of two or three or ten others. Maybe a hundred others. Do you know how many men I've lost under my command?

Sergeant Horvath: How many?

Captain Miller: Ninety-four. But that means I've saved the lives of ten times that many, doesn't it? Maybe even 20, right? Twenty times as many? And that's how simple it is. That's how you... that's how you rationalize making the choice between the mission and the man.

Captain Miller: Well when I think of home, I... I think of something specific. I think of my, my hammock in the backyard or my wife pruning the rosebushes in a pair of my old work gloves.

Private Ryan: This, this one night, two of my brothers came and woke me up in the middle of the night. And they said they had a surprise for me. So they took me to the barn up in the loft and there was my oldest brother, Dan, with Alice, Alice Jardine. I mean, picture a girl who just took a nosedive from the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down. And... and Dan's got his shirt off and he's working on this bra and he's tryin to get it off and all of a sudden Shawn just screams out, "Danny you're a young man, don't do it!" And so Alice Jardine hears this and she screams and she jumps up and she tries to get running out of the barn but she's still got this shirt over her head. She goes running right into the wall and knocks herself out. So now Danny's just so mad at us. He, he starts coming after us, but... but at the same time Alice is over there unconscious. He's gotta wa... , wake her up. So he grabs her by a leg and he's drag, dragging her. At the same time he picks up a shovel. And he's going after Shawn, and Shawn's saying, "What are you trying to hit me for? I just did you a favor!" And so this makes Dan more angry. He tries to swing this thing, he looses the shovel, goes outta his grasp and hits a kerosene lantern; the thing explodes, the whole barn almost goes up because of this thing. That was it. That was the last, that was, Dan went off to basic the next day. That was the last night the four of us were together. That was two years ago. Tell me about your wife and those rosebushes?

Captain Miller: No, no that one I save just for me.

Private Reiben: I got a bad feeling about this one.

Captain Miller: When was the last time you felt good about anything?

Medic Wade: We stopped the bleeding! We stopped the bleeding!

[a bullet hits the patient in the head]

Medic Wade: Fuck! Just give us a fucking chance you son of a bitch! You son of a fucking cocksucker!

Medic Wade: Only thing is, sometimes she'd come home early, and I'd pretend to be asleep

Mellish: Who, your mom?

Medic Wade: Yeah. She'd stand in the doorway looking at me... and I'd just keep my eyes shut. And I knew she just wanted to find out about my day - that she came home early... just to talk to me. And I still wouldn't move... I'd still pretend to just be asleep. I don't know why I did that.

Gen. George C. Marshall: I have a letter here, written a long time ago, to a Mrs. Bixby in Boston. So bear with me. "Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln."

Lieutenant Dewindt: FUBAR.

Private Reiben: FUBAR.

Sergeant Horvath: FUBAR.

Captain Miller: FUBAR

Private Jackson: Y'all got that right.

Corporal Upham: I looked up "fubar" in the German dictionary and there's no fubar in here.

Old James Ryan: [Last lines, addressing Capt. Miller's grave] My family is with me today. They wanted to come with me. To be honest with you, I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I've earned what all of you have done for me.

Ryan's Wife: James?...

[looking at headstone]

Ryan's Wife: Captain John H Miller.

Old James Ryan: Tell me I have led a good life.

Ryan's Wife: What?

Old James Ryan: Tell me I'm a good man.

Ryan's Wife: You *are*.

[Walks away]

Old James Ryan: [Stands back and salutes]

Private Ryan: Picture a girl who took a nosedive from the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Private Reiben: What's the saying? "If God's on our side, who the hell could be on theirs?"

Upham: "If God is for us, who could be against us?"

Private Reiben: Yeah, what'd I say?

Private Reiben: [shouts at Private Ryan] Hey asshole! Two of our guys died trying to find you, all right?

Private Reiben: You wanna explain the math of this to me? I mean, where's the sense of riskin' the lives of the eight of us to save one guy?

Captain Miller: Twenty degrees. Anybody wanna answer that?

Medic Wade: Reiben, think about the poor bastard's mother.

Private Reiben: Hey, Doc, I got a mother, all right? I mean, you got a mother. Sarge's got a mother. I mean, shit, I bet even the captain's got a mother.

[he turns and looks at Miller, who has a bemused expression on his face]

Private Reiben: Well, maybe not the captain, but the rest of us got mothers.

Upham: "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."

Mellish: La-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la. What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Corporal, huh? We're all supposed to die, is that it?

Captain Miller: Upham's talking about our duty as soldiers.

Upham: Yes, sir.

Captain Miller: We all have orders, and we have to follow 'em. That supersedes everything, including your mothers.

Upham: Yes, sir. Thank you sir.

Private Reiben: Even if you think the mission's FUBAR, sir?

Captain Miller: *Especially* if you think the mission's FUBAR.

[talking about how to disable the tanks]

Captain Miller: You take a standard G.I sock, cram it with as much Composition B as it can hold, rig up a simple fuse, then coat the whole thing with axel grease. Now when you throw it, it should stick. Its a bomb that sticks, its a "sticky bomb". Think of a better way to knock out the tracks, I'm all ears.

Private Reiben: This is great, now we gotta surrender our socks.

Private Ryan: [after being told he can go home, to himself] It doesn't make any sense.

[normal voice]

Private Ryan: It doesn't make any sense, sir. Why? Why do I deserve to go? Why not any of these guys? They all fought just as hard as me.

Captain Miller: Is that what they're suppose to tell your mother when they send her another folded American flag?

Private Ryan: Tell her that when you found me I was here and I was with the only brothers that I have left and that there was no way I was gonna desert them. I think she'll understand that. There's no way I'm leaving this bridge.

Steamboat Willie: Please, I like America! Fancy schmancy! What a cinch! Go fly a kite! Cat got your tongue! Hill of beans! Betty Boop, what a dish. Betty Grable, nice gams.

[singing]

Steamboat Willie: I say can you see! I say can you see! I... I say... Fuck Hitler. Fuck Hitler!

Captain Miller: Caparzo, get that kid back up there!

Private Caparzo: Captain, the decent thing to do would be take her over to the next town.

Captain Miller: We're not here to do the decent thing, we're here to follow fucking orders!

Private Jackson: I wouldn't venture out there fellas. This sniper's got talent.

Private Reiben: You know what that song reminds me of? It reminds me of Mrs. Rachel Troubowitz and what she said to me the day I left for basic.

Mellish: What, don't touch me?

Private Reiben: No, Mrs. Rachel Troubowitz was our super's wife. She comes into my mom's shop to try on a few things, all right? And she's easily like a uh, a 44 double E. These things are massive. And I've got her convinced that she's like a 42D, all right. So we're in the dressing room, she's trying to squeeze into this side cut, silk ribbonned, triple panel girdle with the uh, shelf-lift brassiere and it's beautiful because she's just pouring outta this thing, you know? It's beautiful. And she sees me and she can tell I got a hard on the size of the statue of liberty, all right? And she says to me, "Richard, calm down." And she says, "Now when you're over there, if you see anything that upsets you, if you're ever scared, I want you to close your eyes and think of these. You understand?" So I said, "Yes, ma'am."

Captain Miller: Private, I'm afraid I have some bad news for ya. Well, there isn't any real easy way to say this, so, uh, so I'll just say it. Your brothers are dead. We have, uh, orders to come get you, 'cause you're going home.

Pvt. James Frederick, Ryan: [starts sobbing] Oh, my God, my brothers are dead. I was gonna take 'em fishing when we got home. How - How did they die?

Captain Miller: They were killed in action.

Pvt. James Frederick, Ryan: No, that can't be. They're both - That... That can't be. My brothers are still in grammar school.

Captain Miller: You're James Ryan?

Pvt. James Frederick, Ryan: Yeah.

Captain Miller: James Francis Ryan from Iowa?

Pvt. James Frederick, Ryan: James Frederick Ryan, Minnesota.

[the whole crew looks embarrassed]

Pvt. James Frederick, Ryan: Well, does that - does that mean my brothers are OK?

Captain Miller: [half-smiles] Yeah, I'm sure they're fine.

Captain Hamill: You got to take Caen so you can take Saint Lo.

Captain Miller: You've got to take Saint Lo to take Valognes.

Captain Hamill: Valognes you got Cherbourg.

Captain Miller: Cherbourg you got Paris.

Captain Hamill: Paris you got Berlin.

Captain Miller: And then that big boat home.

Sergeant Horvath: You don't know when to shut up; you don't know HOW to shut up!

Medic Wade: Actually, the trick to falling asleep is trying to stay awake.

Mellish: How is that, Wade?

Medic Wade: Well, when my mother was an intern, she used to work late through the night... sleep through the day. So the only time we'd ever get to talk about anything is when she'd get home. So what I... I used to do, I used to lie in my bed and try to stay awake as long as I could, but it never worked 'cause... 'cause the harder I'd try, the faster I'd fall asleep.

Private Reiben: Yeah well, that wouldn't have mattered none in my house. My ma, she would've come home, shook me awake, chatted me up 'til dawn. I swear that woman was never too tired to talk.

Mellish: That was probably the only time she could get a word in.

Captain Miller: [after Reiben courageously saves Ryan from being hit by a tank shell] . RYAN!

[run to the building Reiben pulled Ryan behind]

Captain Miller: Ryan.

Private Ryan: [to Reiben, who is sitting on Ryan] Get off of me!

Captain Miller: Are you all right?

Private Ryan: Uhh! GET OFF OF ME!

Private Reiben: Yeah. I'm fine too, Captain. Thanks.

Captain Miller: This Ryan better be worth it. He'd better go home and cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting lightbulb or something. 'Cause the truth is, I wouldn't trade 10 Ryans for one Vecchio or one Caparzo.

Sergeant Horvath: Amen.

[Listening skeptically to German propaganda coming over a loudspeaker]

Captain Miller: "The Statue of Liberty is kaput" - that's disconcerting.

Captain Miller: You and I are taking a squad over to Neuville on a public relations mission.

Sergeant Horvath: What, you leading a squad?

Captain Miller: Some private in the 101st lost three brothers and he's got a ticket home.

Sergeant Horvath: How come Neuville?

Captain Miller: Eh, they think he's up there somewhere, part of all those airborne misdrops.

Sergeant Horvath: It's not gonna be easy finding one particular soldier in the middle of this whole goddamn war.

Captain Miller: Like finding a needle in a stack of needles.

Sergeant Horvath: But what about the company?

Captain Miller: We take the pick of the litter and the rest get folded into Baker.

Sergeant Horvath: Jesus Christ. They took away your company?

Captain Miller: Wasn't my company, it was the Army's. So they told me, anyway. Give me Reiben on BAR, Jackson, Wade, Beasley, and Caparzo.

Sergeant Horvath: Beasley's dead.

Captain Miller: All right, Mellish then. We got anybody speaks French?

Sergeant Horvath: Not that I know of.

Captain Miller: What about Talbot?

Sergeant Horvath: This morning.

Captain Miller: Oh... all right. I'm gonna try to dig up another interpreter. Assemble at battalion motor pool on the beach.

Sergeant Horvath: Yes, sir. Listen up...

Private Caparzo: What are we gonna do?

Sergeant Horvath: What?

Private Caparzo: What are we gonna do?

Sergeant Horvath: You're goin' home wrapped in an American flag with a hunk of cheese in your ass, Caparzo, you smart-ass! Now listen up...

Private Reiben: I thought you liked it in the ass.

Sergeant Horvath: What?

Private Reiben: I thought you liked it in the ass!

Sergeant Horvath: Stars.

Lieutenant Dewindt: Yeah, Brigadier General Amend, deputy commander, 101st. Some fucking genius had the great idea of welding a couple of steel plates onto our deck to keep the general safe from ground fire. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell me about it until we were just getting airborne. Well, that's like trying to fly a freight train. OK? Gross overload. Trim characteristics all shot to hell. I nearly broke both my arms trying to keep her level. And when- and when we released, you know I cut as hard as I could, tried to gain some altitude and still keep her from stalling. We came down like a fucking meteor. And that is how we ended up. And the others, they stopped easy enough OK, though, you know? We were just-we were just too damn heavy, you know? The grass was wet, downward slope and all. 22 guys dead.

Captain Miller: All that for a general?

Lieutenant Dewindt: One man.

Private Reiben: Lot of that going around.

Captain Miller: Keep the sand out of your weapons. Keep those actions clear. I'll see you on the beach.

[talking about Capt. Miller]

Corporal Upham: Reiben, so you even know where he went to school?

Private Reiben: Cap'n didn't go to school, they assembled him at OSC outta spare body parts of dead GIs.

Private Caparzo: You gotta pay attention to detail, I know exactly where he's from and I know exactly what he did 'cuz I pay attention to detail.

Private Jackson: Hey, Upham, careful you don't step in the bullshit!

Mellish: [to Dagwood DuselDorf] Your father was circumcised by my rabbi, you prick!

[Miller purposely draws fire]

Sergeant Horvath: Captain, if your mother saw you do that, she'd be very upset.

Captain Miller: I thought *you* were my mother.

Upham: What's FUBAR?

Mellish: Oh, it's German.

[He chuckles derisively]

Mellish: Yeah.

Upham: Never heard of that.

Private Ryan: Uh sir? Where am I to be during all this?

Captain Miller: No more than two feet away from me. And that's not negotiable.

Mellish: [as a column of German prisoners passes by] Juden.

[pauses]

Mellish: Juden.

[pauses]

Mellish: Juden!

Mellish: [shows star of David necklace to prisoners] I'm Juden, you know?

[pauses]

Mellish: Juuuuuuuuuuuuden!

Sergeant Horvath: What are your orders?

Captain Miller: Sergeant, we have crossed some strange boundary here. The world has taken a turn for the surreal.

Sergeant Horvath: Clearly, but the question still stands.

Captain Miller: I don't know. What do you think?

Sergeant Horvath: I don't think you want to know what I think.

Captain Miller: No, Mike, I do.

Sergeant Horvath: Well, part of me thinks the kid's right. What has he done to deserve this? He wants to stay here, fine, let's leave him and go home.

Captain Miller: Yeah.

Sergeant Horvath: But another part of me thinks what if, by some miracle, we stay, and actually make it out of here. Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful shitty mess. That's what I was thinking, sir. Like you said, Captain, we do that, then we all earn the right to go back home.

Captain Miller: Oh, brother!

[lining up a rifle shot]

Private Jackson: O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me.

Private Reiben: You wouldn't shoot the kraut and now you're gonna shoot me?

Sergeant Horvath: He's better than you.

[Srgt. Horvath just got shot for the third time]

Captain Miller: Mike, Are you all right?

Sergeant Horvath: I just got the wind knocked out of me. I'm fine!

Private: [screaming in agony] THEY'RE KILLING US! AND WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKIN' CHANCE AND THAT'S NOT FAIR!

Captain Miller: It's like finding a needle in a stack of needles.

Captain Miller: The world has taken a turn for the surreal.

Corporal Upham: [Wade lying down, shivering with pain and anguish, after being shot through the stomach] Tell us what to do... tell us how to fix you.

Captain Miller: What can we do Wade? Tell us what to do.

Medic Wade: [Wade still shivering] I could use some... I could use a little Morphine.

Captain Miller: [Capt. Miller to Sergeant Horvath] Okay... Give it to him... Give it him!

Captain Miller: Get your gear. Let's go.

[Reiben stays put]

Sergeant Horvath: You heard him, gear up. Your captain just gave you an order.

Private Reiben: Yeah, like the one he gave to take this machine gun. That was a real doosey, wasn't it?

[walks over to Miller]

Sergeant Horvath: Soldier, you are way out of line!

Private Reiben: Yes sir, that was one hell of a call coming to take this nest, but hell, we only lost one of our guys going for it. That's right, I hope Mama Ryan's real fuck'n happy knowing that Little Jimmy's life is a little bit more important than two of our guys! But then again we haven't found him yet have we? Have we?

Captain Miller: [to the squad while pointing at Caparzo's dead body] THIS is why we don't pick up children!

Sergeant Horvath: Maybe I should go up the middle, sir.

Captain Miller: The way you run? I don't think so.

Sergeant Horvath: Maybe I should go up the left, sir.

Captain Miller: Maybe you should shut up!

[Arguing about whether or not to attack the radio nest]

Mellish: I'm just saying, this seems like an unnecessary risk considering our objective, sir.

Captain Miller: Our objective is to win the war.

Corporal Upham: "War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man."

Captain Miller: I guess that's Emerson's way of finding the bright side.

Sergeant Horvath: We're in business!

Private: [shouting and under intense fire] What's the rallying point?

Captain Miller: Anywhere but here!

Private Reiben: [after staring at Caparzo's dead body] Fuck Ryan.

Sergeant Hill: THUNDER!

Private: Flash! Come on in.

Sergeant Hill: Hey guys, we're looking for Captain Hamill.

Private: He's over down there, somewhere across the square.

Sergeant Hill: Across the square?

Private: Go easy. Watch for snipers.

Sergeant Horvath: Take it easy. Sit down.

Sergeant Hill: All right, Jimmy T. Go find Captain Hamill. Bring him in here.

Jimmy T: What? Up there?

Sergeant Hill: How the hell should I know? Would you just go look for him, please? Thank you, you moron. All right. You guys just flake out here for a while. Ohh. Let me get this goddam hitchhiker out of my boot.

[He sits on a pile of lumber to remove his boot. A larger piece of lumber falls hard against the stone wall in the background, causing it to collapse and reveal a room of hidden German soldiers]

Gen. George C. Marshall: That boy is alive. We are gonna send somebody to find him. And we are gonna get him the Hell... outta there.

Private: [when setting the German soldiers on fire] Don't shoot! LET THEM BURN!

[lining up a rifle shot]

Private Jackson: Be not Thou far from me, O Lord.

Upham: So where are you from, Captain? What'd you do before the war?

Captain Miller: What's the pool up to?

Upham: [chuckles] Uh... up over three hundred, sir.

Captain Miller: Well, when it gets up to five hundred, I'll give you the answers and we'll split the money. How about that?

Upham: Well, if that's the way you feel sir, then I feel it's my duty and your command to suggest that we wait until it gets up to a thousand, sir.

Captain Miller: [pause] What if we don't live that long?

Upham: [makes a show of considering] Five hundred?

Captain Miller: Five hundred would be good, yeah. Get some sleep Corporal.

Upham: Yes, sir.

Corporal Upham: Caparzo, is it?

Private Caparzo: Hey Corporal, drop dead!

Corporal Upham: Got you.

Private Caparzo: And another thing, every time you salute the Captain, you make him a target for the Germans. Do us a favor. Don't do it. Especially when I'm standing next to him, capisci?

Corporal Upham: Uh, capisci.

Lt. Col. Anderson: What about *our* casualties?

Captain Miller: Well, the figures were, 35 dead, times two wounded. They just didn't wanna give up those 88s.

Lt. Col. Anderson: It was a tough assignment, that's why you got it.

Captain Miller: Yes, it was.

Lt. Col. Anderson: John, I've got another one for ya...

Captain Miller: Yes, Sir.

Lt. Col. Anderson: This one's straight from the top...

Captain Miller: We are not here to do a decent thing, we are here to follow fuckin' orders!

Captain Hamill: We sure as hell could use you around here, but I understand what you're doing.

Captain Miller: You do?

Captain Hamill: Yeah. I've got a couple of brothers myself.

Captain Miller: Oh.

Captain Hamill: Good luck.

Captain Miller: Thank you.

Captain Hamill: No, I mean it. Find him. Get him home.

Sergeant Horvath: That's quite a view.

Captain Miller: Yes it is. Quite a view.

Captain Miller: James Francis Ryan from Iowa?

Private Ryan: Yes sir. How'd you guess that?

Sergeant Horvath: This time the mission is the man.

Sergeant Horvath: Why don't you just hand 'em blindfolds, Captain?

Captain Miller: All we can do here is die.

Mellish: [shouting] Upham! Upham! Ammo goddamn it!

Steamboat Willie: Upham!

Captain Miller: They're tankbusters sir. P-51s.

Private Ryan: Angels on our shoulders.

Captain Miller: Whose goin' left?

Private Jackson: I'll do it. I'll go left.

Private Reiben: [Sergeant wields a pistol at Reiben for disobeying the Captain] Put your money where your mouth is.

Captain Miller: [on Omaha Beach] Bangalores up the line! Bagalores up the line!

Sergeant Horvath: Heads up, bangers comin' your way.

Private Caparzo: [a soldier's helmet is struck by a bullet and he then takes it off] Jesus, lucky bastard.

[the other soldier is then shot in the head and falls dead]

Captain Miller: Covering fire !

Sergeant Horvath: [On Omaha Beach] Reuben! Hey, Reiben! Where's your BAR?

Private Reiben: Bottom of the channel sir. The bitch tried to drown me.

[first lines]

Ryan's son: [running to comfort his father] Dad?

[flashback to D-Day]

LCVP pilot: [shouting out the soldiers on the raft] CLEAR THE RAMP! THIRTY SECONDS! GOD BE WITH YA!

Captain Miller: This is all? That's all that've made it?

Sergeant Horvath: We're scattered pretty bad, sir. There's bound to be more of us.

Captain Miller: Not enough, this is not enough.

Sergeant Horvath: Dog One-It's got to be the cut on the right, or is it the one on the left, shit!

Captain Miller: No, no. Vierville is to the west of us, so this is Dog One.

Steamboat Willie: American, I like American.

Captain Miller: [shouting] Bangalores, clear the shingle.

Private: Fire in the hole.

Sergeant Horvath: Fire in the hole.

Private: Fire in the hole.

Private: [lights his bangalore]

Medic Wade: Fire in the hole.

[Bangalores blow up and the barbed wire is gone]

Paratrooper Mandelsohn: We missed our drop zone by about 20 miles, ended up way over by Bumville or some damn place.

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