Saving Private Ryan (Single-Disc Special Limited Edition)

EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED

Good realistic war movie

Saving Pvt. Ryan was the best picture of the year hands down. Anytime someone takes a much traveled genre like the war movie, and reinvents and reinvigorates it while raising the bar for future films it is exceptional. Spielberg did that here. No one has ever depicted combat quite so effectively, and Pvt. Ryan is now the standard. Even the negative reviewers concede the Omaha Beach opening is stunning and excellent. But, I think the assault on the machine gun and the closing! battle just as intense and vivid.Pro War? Please. I don't think Spielberg's purpose was to be pro OR anti-war. I think his purpose was to honor the sacrifice of the men who fought the war. Period. But within that context, I think the death of Wayne (the Medic) is as horrifying in its unexceptionalness as anything I've seen on screen. This is war, overdosing with morphine a friend who is bleeding to death with a shredded liver. Just like that. And Mellish's hand to hand fight and vain attempt at stopping his own killing after being overpowered...this is pro-War stuff? Not to mention, that at the end of the movie nearly everyone in the squad has been killed.The idea that Spielberg was glorifying Americans at the expense of everyone else is nonsense. This movie wasn't about Stalingrad & the Eastern Front. It wasn't about the entire operation of Overlord. It wasn't about the entire scope of the Allied effort. It was about one squad of Rangers landing on Omaha and !then getting a strange assignment. Period.That such a mission never happened? So what? That there was no plot? That IS the plot. The mission. Works for me.One quick comment about the idea of cliched characters etc. Who do these people think fought the war? It was wise guys from NY, hillbillies from W. Virginia, hispanics from S.California, southerners, hobos, college men etc. How in hell else are you supposed to show them? AND, the military of WWII was not integrated, in case you didn't know.As to the reality of the ending battle. First, when the Sgt. says "something good coming from this mess" I don't think he meant all of WWII. I think he meant the mess of this mission and the men they had lost now & everywhere. Second, the Germans are attacking the town, Miller & the Airborne defending. Door-to-door street fighting is the most casualty-intensive fighting possible, and the advantage is usually always with the defenders. That's why soldiers hate it. S!o they had a chance and they had a plan....ultimately to retreat & blow the bridge. If you think this is too far fetched, you should read Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers etc. and find out just how incredible small unit actions have been. Many are unbelievable.And what were Miller & his squad to do when Ryan refused to leave? Say "tough luck 101st, we're outta here". Maybe. But I think they would have stayed & fought. Just read about the Rangers who scaled the cliffs on D-Day. Courage was a common currency in those days.As to the acting, characters etc. I thought they were fine. There were no false heroics to my mind. I believe they wanted to honor these men and they played it straight. Hanks was believable to me portraying a school teacher who is now a leader of men and his scene where he does the awful math of the men he's lost and the rationale he uses to live with the fact says it all. He seemed to me an average man having to do impossible, horrible things and wo!ndering what it is doing to him.The movie is about suiting-up, showing-up and getting-on-with-it. It is about the everyday heroism of doing the dirty job and trying to survive.Was the movie flawless? No. I would have had Ryan tell a better story to Miller than the somewhat stupid and cruel one he told. And, for that fact I didn't get the point of Wayne's story about his mother. The German shooting Miller and Upham shooting the German was somewhat problematic (emotionally satisfying, but empty. If the lesson is mercy will get you killed, by that logic, he should have shot them all)....but these are minor quibbles in a great effort.What about Spielberg? Spielberg is a brilliant and clever director. Too clever? Sometimes. But I liked most of his touches and flourishes. I liked the sniper seeing the other sniper shooting at him. I like the wall coming down & the standoff. I liked the tank rolling up on Miller blowing up by a seeming gunshot. I didn't mind !the bit of deception at the opening & closing of the film because by the time it ended I was moved by the sentiment. I thought the opening & closing battles were magnificent. I like his compositions. I thought all the combat throughout had a genuine feel never depicted as accurately before. His camerawork & direction was continuously inventive. I thought death was shown without glamor. The courage as that mustered up and brought to bear by ordinary men. Enough.I could go on, but what's the point? If you are nitpicking this movie you have missed the experience. And it WAS an experience (especially on the big screen) that was exceptional for eye, ear and emotions. If you were not moved, so be it. I found it a beautiful tribute to the fathers and grandfathers who did what they had to do. And it came as close as anyone has been able to convey to an audience the horrors they had to endure.It isn't a documentary, and it isn't a history. It's a movie. But a first rate! movie in all departments.

Arrived quickly and as described

This was really good. It is based on a true story.

As far as I'm concerned, war films are divided into to periods: Pre-Ryan and Post-Ryan. That is pretty much it. This film is that important.Before private Ryan war films (specifically WWII films)were very different. I'm not saying they weren't good. Some were awsome and a few downright classics but looking at it from Saving Private Ryan's perspective, it almost seems like they were movies about wars that never happened.In those movies, your survival depended on whether you were a good soldier. If you were good, no one could touch you. In those films the good guys were good and that was that. Nothing that could shine even the slightest sliver of moral ambiguity would show up. In those films, the bad guys were robots with no souls who were intent on destroying anything resembling goodness. For millions of people, this is the way WWII was fought.Then came Saving Private Ryan.This film showed war as it had never been depicted: The reality of it all.(As many veterans have confirmed through their reaction to the film)The films first set piece, in which the 2nd Rangers storm Omaha Beach in Normandie is an unflinching and brutal wake up call. Good soldiers, extraordinary ones actually, die. Some didn't even had a chance to get off the boat. It wasn't about who was good or skilled. It was the luck of the draw. Maybe you die today, maybe you don't. That initial wave, in which the germans are practically using the American soldiers as target practice, shows not only the brutality of war but the frailty of man, as evidenced in the many individual reactions of soldiers Spielberg captures. We see them getting blown up,losing limbs and even guts. Suddenly, "crying for your mama" is not as childish or cowardly as we thought.We also see the enemy in a whole new light. After the Rangers finally make it up the beach, some of them shoot a group of surrendering germans in a scene we would have never seen in a film before this one. At that moment the germans stop being robots and become human. "Our guys wouldn't do that!" would cry some but deep inside we know better. If you just saw most of your friends slaughtered, what would you do if you faced their executioners? This is the type of question this film makes you think again and again about war and what it means. But obviously gore and horror for gut and horror's sake is not what makes this film so important and relevant. In the end, it's the soldiers and the choices they make in all that chaos. Many filmakers in the past might have opted to downright ignore the chaos of war maybe out of respect. To avoid having thee soldiers looking a little less because of the things they did or witnessed but Spielberg chose to show it and the result is quite the contrary. By witnessing the true hell they went through we actually appreciate the choices they made even more. Under all of that, they chose to fight for their country and protect each other. Incredible.I could go on but many, many people have made better reviews than this one. To think I wanted to focus more on the films transfer to BD. Now I'm running long.To put it simply, the transfer is flawless. Spielberg has become notorious for the look of his later films which are defing by a rough, grainy, almost desaturated look. A.I. Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Munich and of course Private Ryan all have similar looks to them. (Not coincidentaly, all of them the handy work of Janus Kaminsky)I was worried that in this manic world of HD and "grain-haters", that the director's true intent might have been lost in a sea of noise reduction and edge enhancement. Not so. All those releases and this masterpiece in particular, retain their intended look. What HD has brought to the table is a sea of colors that I was not able to pick neither in theaters (where I saw it three times) or in all subsequent releases on home video. Now I'm, not talking about Pixar-Cars-The Incredibles kind of colors mind you. Its more subtle but very noticable. Now flesh tones look real and defined. The greens and olives (which dominate the film) look amazing and the bright colors that show up so sparingly now pop even more. Textures come alive. A scene where Mellish shares his gum with another soldier, check out the detail in their surrounding s and the barrel of the machine gun. Amazing. And all that, while retaining the original grain structure of the film. Now that is what HD is all about.I cannot recomment this film enough and this Blu-Ray is one of the best transfers of a catalog title of 2010 if not the best so far. While I'm sure many would be dissapointed that the film doesn't look like, say, Avatar on Blu-Ray. I say they are missing the point. This is the way this film was meant to be seen.