Saving Private Ryan

Released 1998
Stars Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies, Matt Damon
Directed by Steven Spielberg

A gritty WWII story that attempts to show the horrors of war as accurately as is possible on film. It opens with the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach, and the action is as graphic as any war movie before. Once the surviving men take the beach, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is ordered to find Private James Francis Ryan. Ryan's three brothers were killed in separate locations at roughly the same time, and his mother was to receive three telegrams informing her of her loss. This is brought to the attention of a general in Washington, who doesn't want Mrs. Ryan to lose her last son. He orders a group to find Ryan and return him home alive.

The film is an essay about war that speaks in action instead of words. One of its many points is how average men were asked to do the impossible, and it also stresses the overwhelming senselessness of war.
 
Summary by Bill Alward, August, 1998