Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #24 Saving Private Ryan
Box Office: $217 Million Dollars
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Original Screenplay, Best Dramatic Score, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, Best Film Editing
Oscar Wins: Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing
MovieRankings.Net: 97/100
Available To Stream: Pluto TV, Paramount+
There might not be a better movie to help appreciate the value of Memorial Day than Saving Private Ryan. I fully admit that I fall into the trap of seeing Memorial Day more as the beginning of the summer than what the day really should mean.
That sacrifice is fully on display in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan as we see the troops storm the beaches of Normandy. Steven Spielberg's brilliance is on full display here as the sequence is shot as though we are on that beach with this guys. It's less of an action scene than a horror one. Surviving that is more about good fortune than anything else. We all have things that we are scared of or make us nervous. Imagine the courage it takes to run up a beach TOWARDS gunfire. You might see friends getting shot and killed right next to you but you have to keep going.
The scene is so powerful that in a small way, the movie can't recover. It never comes close to reaching those heights again. Don't get me wrong. This is a fantastic movie and should have beaten Shakespeare In Love for Best Picture that year. Even the Oscar voters seemed to know this when they still gave Spielberg the Oscar for Best Director. Harvey Weinstein basically strong armed the entire movie industry to vote for a movie like Shakespeare that should have been happy just to be nominated.
Tom Hanks is perfect as John Miller, a man who was living a normal life as teacher just three years earlier. Now, he's in charge of these young men who have been thrust into a mission that seems unfair yet courageous. Saving Private Ryan is about heroism and sacrifice but it's about being a man. Or in the case of Upham (played really well by Jeremy Davies), what it means to fail as a man. He is a coward but who are we are to truly judge? I want to get angry at Upham at the end of the movie but who the fuck am I? I have no idea how I'd react in a situation like that. The older I get, the more I understand that we should have pity for Upham. He's not a bad man, just a scared one. Imagine the regret that man would have to live with the rest of his life? War is more than just heroism and sacrifice.
Casting Matt Damon was also a brilliant movie. I love that Spielberg (and this great script by Robert Rodat) has the guys angry with Ryan at first. How could anyone not feel resentment for this guy who is going to be going home? But by having it be Matt Damon, who was just coming off Saving Private Ryan, the audience would like this guy even before the other soldiers did.
It might be an impossible ask to have the rest of the movie stand up to what we see in the first 20 minutes. Some other casting like Ted Danson is a bit distracting but I'm nitpicking. Other than 1917, I don't know if there is another military movie I like more than this. For a lot of these actors who make up the rest of the battalion, it's their greatest moment. Guys like Tom Sizemore, Barry Pepper, Edward Burns, Adam Goldberg and Giovanni Ribisi have had very nice careers but you could do a lot worse than have this be your shining moment.
Saving Private Ryan is a wonderful tribute to the men who saved the country and the world. It does so by showing us them saving just one man. Memorial Day weekend is the gateway to summer but I'll try to do a better job remembering why we celebrate it.
24. Saving Private Ryan
25. True Romance
26. Dumb & Dumber
27. Kingpin
28. Donnie Brasco
29. Heat
30. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
31. Rounders
32. Unforgiven
33. Trainspotting
34. The Game
35. Out Of Sight
36. Carlito's Way
37. Seven
38. L.A. Confidential
39. Speed
40. Gattaca
41. Misery
42. Tombstone
43. Ransom
44. Wayne's World
45. The Insider
46. Back To The Future Part III
47. A Bronx Tale
48. The People Vs. Larry Flynt
49. Eyes Wide Shut
50. The Sandlot
51. Happy Gilmore
52. Contact
53. The Green Mile
54. Man On The Moon
55. Boyz N The Hood
56. Grosse Pointe Blank
57. Independence Day
58. The Rainmaker
59. Go
60. The Firm
61. Magnolia
62. The Talented Mr. Ripley
63. Tommy Boy
64. The Usual Suspects
65. In The Line Of Fire
66. My Cousin Vinny
67. Awakenings
68. JFK
69. Toy Story
70. Home Alone
71. Jerry Maguire
72. Titanic
73. Billy Madison
74. Apollo 13
75. Braveheart
76. Edward Scissorhands
77. Cape Fear
78. The River Wild
79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
80. 12 Monkeys
81. Stir Of Echoes
82. Mission: Impossible
83. Total Recall
84. Quiz Show
85. For Love Of The Game
86. Being John Malkovich
87. Men In Black
88. Scream
89. Alive
90. Three Kings
91. Glengarry Glen Ross
92. Die Hard With A Vengeance
93. The Blair Witch Project
94. Twister
95. Dirty Work
96. Election
97. Tremors
98. Any Given Sunday
99. The Wedding Singer
100. Clerks