Extras : 2 Trailers, "Into the Breach" featurette,
Production Notes, Cast and Crew biogs
Director:
Steven Spielberg
(1941, Amistad, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial, Hook, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Jaws,
Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List)
Producer:
Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn
Screenplay:
Robert Rodat
Music:
John Williams
Cast:
Captain John H. Miller: Tom Hanks
Sergeant Michael Horvath: Tom Sizemore
Private Richard Reiben: Edward Burns
Private Jackson: Barry Pepper
Private Mellish: Adam Goldberg
Private Adrian Caparzo: Vin Diesel
T/4 Medic Irwin Wade: Giovanni Ribisi
Corporal Timothy E. Upham: Jeremy Davies
Private James Francis Ryan: Matt Damon
Captain Fred Hamill: Ted Danson
Lieutenant Colonel Anderson: Dennis Farina
History was never my strong-point in school
and I'm not one for reading books, so sometimes the closest I'm going to get
to a history lesson comes with watching a film and this one begins with the
D-Day landings on June 6th, 1944 in the Dog Green Sector of Omaha Beach.
The first half-hour of the film addresses the problem of how do you keep your
head when all around others are, literally, losing theirs. As soon as the
ramps are lowered and the soldiers are set to storm the beach, they're cut down
in their prime before they've had time to spit out their chewing gum. It's
literally like shooting fish in a barrel. As for the rest who do make it out
of there, for most of them it's just a matter of time before they're missing
body parts.
Once that mission is taken care of, eight of the men are assigned one more
task before they're allowed to go home. Three of Private James Ryan's (Matt
Damon) brothers have been killed in action and, with little information
to go on other than that he should be "somewhere in Normandy", they must find
him and bring him back to base.
Led by Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks), the team consists of
Sergeant Michael Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Private Richard Reiben
(Edward Burns), Private Jackson (Barry Pepper),
Private Mellish (Adam Goldberg, Chandler's flatmate in Friends
when Joey moved out temporarily), Private Adrian Caparzo (Vin Diesel),
T/4 Medic Irwin Wade (Giovanni Ribisi) and new kid on the block
Corporal Timothy E. Upham (Jeremy Davies).
When I first heard of the plot I thought it was a typical American gung-ho
piece of nonsense for which everything would turn out perfectly, but no,
to find the boy is going to be a potentially-fruitless PR exercise, as the
eight men reluctantly search for him and before they even get to meet him
they'll hate him for what he's unknowingly put them through. Not every one
will make it, so who will survive?
The cast also includes cameos from Ted Danson as Captain Fred Hamill
and Dennis Farina as Lieutenant Colonel Anderson.
The Region 1 DVD was apparently a high quality digital transfer using the
"C-Reality" process. It's not stated whether the same applies her, but it
does look mostly excellent with the only scenes that suffer from some artifacts
are those that top and tail the film from the present day.
The film was show using Panavision Platinum and Panastar WWII era cameras
and many of the war scenes were shot at 12 frames-per-second (fps) which give
them a slightly stuttering look that's intentional.
Presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 (16:9) widecreen,
The average bitrate is 5.25b/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
Two DVDs were released in the US. One with DTS 5.1 sound and the other with
Dolby Digital 5.1. We only get the latter and it's in English only. It's nothing
short of first-rate with all the battle scenes taking most of the credits as
bullets fly past with brilliant use made of the stereo separation. There's
an amazing cacophony of sound effects as this happens while planes fly overhead
and the tanks roll in.
Extras :
The major extra on this disc is a 25-minute featurette, "Into the Breach",
which provides a fascinating insight into those who fought in the war, with
comments on how realistic they thought the film was and providing footage of
the actual D-Day invasion. The booklet also includes some history notes about
D-Day which are replicated here.
Also included are 2 Trailers in non-anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, one for
the film's original cinema release and the other for when it was re-released
with a stack of Oscar nominations in tow, plus a few pages of Production
Notes and Cast and Crew biogs on many of the major players.
Once again there's not enough chapters - just 20 over the
two-and-three-quarter-hour running time, but the menus are mostly animated
with sound from the film's haunting score. Both the dialogue and subtitles
are in English only.
Saving Private Ryan is a film worth seeing with many unsurpassable
battle moments, but does have it's slow areas too. The BBFC's liking for
Spielberg accounts for the reason why scores of gory moments are still allowed
within a 15-certificate film.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
