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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Dreamworks Video
Salesrank: 539
Released: November 2, 1999 |
| Our Price: $7.67 |
| Used Price: $3.89 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Captain John Miller must take his men behind enemy lines to find Private Ryan, whose three brothers have been killed in combat. Faced with impossible odds, the men question their orders.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 14-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD
Description of Saving Private Ryan (Special Limited Edition):
When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds.
A stalwart Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers have recently been killed in action. It's a public relations move for the Army, but it has historical precedent dating back to the Civil War. Some critics of the film have labeled the central characters stereotypes. If that is so, this movie gives stereotypes a good name: Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the hotheaded Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew, Vin Diesel as the oversize Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the soulful medic, and Jeremy Davies, who as a meek corporal gives the film its most memorable performance.
The movie is as heavy and realistic as Spielberg's Oscar-winning Schindler's List, but it's more kinetic. Spielberg and his ace technicians (the film won five Oscars: editing (Michael Kahn), cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), sound, sound effects, and directing) deliver battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut. The violence is extreme but never gratuitous. The final battle, a dizzying display of gusto, empathy, and chaos, leads to a profound repose. Saving Private Ryan touches us deeper than Schindler because it succinctly links the past with how we should feel today. It's the film Spielberg was destined to make. --Doug Thomas
Saving Private Ryan (Special Limited Edition) Reviews:
Saving Private Ryan 
2009-10-07 - This motion picture is one of the best war movies ever made. The battle scenes are very surreal: especially the D-Day invasion on Omaha Beach at the first part of the movie. Some of the scenes in this movie are intensly graphic and seem very realistic: something you should expect in any good war flick such as this one. 'Saving Private Ryan' has a very dramatic and riveting plot. After watching this movie it had me wanting to learn more about the history of WWII. The weapons, military outfits, and tanks seen in this movie are highly accurate to what was used in WWII. The cast in this film performed outstandingly well! They made it seem like they weren't even acting at all. Tom Hanks deserved an Oscar for the performance he gave in this film. 'Saving Private Ryan' is such a well done movie that I sometimes forget it is a movie while watching it. Composer John Williams delivered a very moving musical (score) for 'Saving Private Ryan': perhaps the best musical (score) ever used in any motion picture. This film is my favorite movie from the highly successful director Steven Spielberg. There are absoultely no flaws in this movie. It is one of my favorite movies alongside 'Platoon', 'Braveheart', and 'Gladiator'. 'Saving Private Ryan' is a film that expresses the true courage and bravery of a group of American soldiers who risk their lives looking for one man lost in combat so he can safely return home: allowing him to have no further risk of being killed in battle like his brothers did. If you like war movies then this one is a must-own.
Spielberg's come a long way, baby.
2009-09-19 - From what is undoubtedly the most realistic filming of the D-Day landings made to date; to the many harrowing incidents encountered throughout, this film is a gem! Top notch Tom Hanks. Just plain excellent! (NOTE:) Not for young children to see.
Great Movie! And a good DVD Quality edition.
2009-09-05 - Saving Private Ryan was the movie that finally took War Movies from the Hollywood of old (Longest Day, Dirty Dozen, Dam Busters, etc) the final step after movies like Apocalypse Now & Platoon endeavoured to bring the true face of war to the big screen - SPR went the rest of the way taking that to it's next stage and adding even greater levels of detail & historical accuracy and realism - it was the movie that led to a whole new generation of movies in the last decade (Band of Brothers; Flags of our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima; We Were Soldiers; Days of Glory; Saints & Soldiers; Max Manus; and more). Good to see it given the high quality 'Superbit' style treatment - the ultimate & preeminent DVD version, at least until a new Blu-ray version is released.
A Masterpiece that I never want to see again
2009-09-02 - I saw this movie during its theatrical release in 1998, and have adamantly refused to see it again. I suppose that probably sounds negative, but any slight against this film is unintentional. After completing this movie, Spielberg and Hanks could comfortably state to the world that their best work was probably behind them.
I have never seen a movie that was so powerful that I shook throughout the entire viewing. By the end, I was not crying, but tears were forcibly running from my eyes from the disbelief and the shock. I could barely walk out of the theater as the credits rolled.
It is the film equivalent of staring clearly into the pit of hell and, for a moment, feeling its unrelenting heat without succumbing to it. You could learn something deeply insightful from such an experience, but it is not pleasant and not an event you'd wish to repeat often. Afterward you likely feel grateful if you were spared from its subject. I cannot imagine how you would feel if you weren't.
And that's really all I have to say. This can never be among my favorite movies, but my respect for it is unrivaled. It is a horrible masterpiece, not because of its quality, but because of its refusal to compromise its subject.
Tremendous
2009-08-06 - Well, what can you say that 1700 other reviewers haven't said before? I doubt I can add a new angle, but wished to express my thoughts regarding this exceptional Steven Spielberg film. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN must be the most realistic war movie ever made (and no, I've never been in combat, yet I feel very comfortable that the sights, sounds, grit, grime, tension, brutality, and horror of actual battle are aptly conveyed in this epic); it's all the viewer can do to get through the first half hour, an unbelievably gruesome and violent depiction of D-Day. Spielberg definitely hooks his audience, even though (and I've seen this film several times) I find myself grimacing and looking away from some of the most disturbing carnage.
We all know the story: A platoon is dispatched deep into Nazi France to find, and then remove, a Private Ryan (Matt Damon). This is a PR move by the War Department, as Ryan's other three brothers have all been killed in action. The journey to find Private Ryan's outfit, and then one final confrontation with German forces before Ryan can be removed, is riveting, compelling, horrific--poignant. The action is powerful but never pretentious, and once again, extraordinarily realistic (including a knife fight when a German soldier, his face dripping with sweat, attempts to calm his American victim as the knife enters his chest). All of the cast is exceptional, headlined by Tom Hanks as platoon leader Captain Miller--an everyday man just trying to hold his group together and make it to the next sunrise. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is an elite epic, and when combined with Schindler's List Spielberg has paid everlasting homage to World War II.
--D. Mikels, Author, The Reckoning
