It’s said that Steven Spielberg’s war film Saving Private Ryan is one of the greatest war films ever made. The opening scene at Omaha Beach, in particular, is often cited as the benchmark for throwing the audience headfirst into what occurred. Many veterans who survived D-Day have said they cannot watch it, even after seeing only a short clip. I remember watching it on the big screen in Canberra and being taken aback by its realism.
According to Matt Damon, in the Omaha Beach landing craft scene, Spielberg chose to strip away almost all dialogue, aside from brief lines like “See you on the beach“. My reason for posting today is to highlight two other scenes in the film: ‘Winning the Omaha Beach battle’ and much later, a segment of the final battle when German forces attack the small defensive position at the bridge.
After having just watched them again, my regard for the movie has risen to another level. In the comments, you won’t find many people disputing its realism; on the contrary, it’s widely regarded as about as authentic as one could imagine – even within the confines of a fictionalised WWII battle. You can watch here a World War II historian rating ‘Saving Private Ryan‘ for realism.
So today’s Friday’s Finest pays homage to a film that will go down in the annals of cinema – not merely as a great movie overall, but as one that achieved near-perfection in its depiction of key action scenes from the Allied offensive in World War II.
Warning: Viewer discretion is advised due to scenes of war violence.
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
One Thanksgiving, a few years after this film was released, I was sitting with my family have coffee & pie & my Uncle started talking about the film. He said it was very realistic. He had been one of the GIs to storm the beach at Normandy on D-Day.
He talked for quite a while about D-Day & his role in that event. I knew he was a WWII vet ~ almost all the men were vets of either WWII or Korea or both ~ but he had never talked about it. Most of the men who fought in those wars never talked about it. They were a different breed than the boys who went to Vietnam or to Afghanistan or Iraq.