Saving Private Ryan (1998) on Netflix
Three Ryan brothers are killed in action. Captain John H. Miller and a squad cross Normandy to find the fourth, Private James Francis Ryan, and bring him home.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb8.6/101,662,260 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
On June 6, 1944, American soldiers land at Omaha Beach in Normandy. Captain John H. Miller leads survivors of the 2nd Ranger Battalion up the sand. In the United States, the War Department finds three death notices for the Ryan family of Iowa. A fourth son, Private James Francis Ryan, serves with the 101st Airborne Division and is missing. General George C. Marshall orders a mission to find Ryan and send him home. Miller takes a squad into the countryside: Sergeant Mike Horvath, Private Richard Reiben, Private Adrian Caparzo, Private Stanley Mellish, Private Daniel Jackson, medic Irwin Wade, and Corporal Timothy Upham, a translator with no combat experience. Moving through German-held territory, Reiben questions whether risking their lives for one soldier is worth it, while Upham, new to the squad, is treated coldly by the others.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Steven Spielberg cast Tom Sizemore as Mike Horvath, the actor's history of drug addiction led the director to require him to pass regular drug tests to keep the part; otherwise the role would be recast and his scenes re-shot. Sizemore had also been offered a role in The Thin Red Line but chose Spielberg's film.
- The film's opening Omaha Beach battle was the most demanding scene: it cost $12 million and took four weeks to shoot, with about 1,500 background actors involved.
- Saving Private Ryan's unexpected loss of Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love is called one of the biggest upsets in awards history, and led DreamWorks executives to accuse its producers, Miramax, of overly aggressive campaigning. A 2015 poll of academy voters suggested they would have voted Saving Private Ryan Best Picture given another chance.
- The Ryan family was based mainly on the four Niland brothers, who served in WWII; two were killed, a third was presumed dead, and the fourth was returned from the war.
- In April 1997, Paramount's parent company chairman Sumner Redstone had Steven Spielberg flip a coin to decide the film's distribution rights; Spielberg won, giving DreamWorks the North American rights and Paramount the international ones.
- At Tom Hanks's and technical adviser Dale Dye's suggestion, Spielberg put the principal cast through a six-day boot camp run by Dye and retired U.S. Marines, with 5-mile runs, weapons training and drills on three hours of sleep a night in the cold and rain.
- The United States Department of Veterans Affairs created a dedicated phoneline for viewers affected by the film, and more veterans visited counselors for post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards.
