American soldiers land on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings in World War II, with multiple deaths from German fire.
The film opens with some of the most devastating footage of combat ever committed to film. For twenty minutes the audience is assailed by subjective sight and sound in an attempt to recreate the feeling of being in the midst of D-Day battle. Much of this terrifying effect is due to the camerawork of Janusz Kaminski.
Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) of the 2nd Ranger Battalion has been assigned to take his squad of seven men into France to find Private James Ryan (Matt Damon, pictured at left), whose three brothers have been killed in combat, and get him home to his grieving mother back in the States.
The squad comprises T/Sgt. Mike Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Pfcs. Richard Reiben (Edward Burns) and Adrian Caparzo (Vin Diesel), Pvts. Stanley Mellish (Adam Goldberg) and Danny Jackson (Barry Pepper), medic Irwin Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), and Timothy Upham (Jeremy Davies), a cartographer and interpreter.
The group have to travel through treacherous German-held territory until they eventually find Ryan and a small group of paratroopers trying to hold on to a key bridge in Ramelle which is about to be attacked by a German Panzer Group.
Though bereaved at the loss of his brothers, Ryan refuses to be led back to safety, so Miller joins his team with the paratroopers to defend the bridge, setting up defences throughout the town.
Tanks and infantry from the 2nd SS Panzer Division duly arrive and the American soldiers put up a valiant fight – but the majority of the paratroopers, along with Horvath, Mellish, and Jackson, are killed.
Miller makes an effort to blow up the bridge, but he is shot. Reiben and Ryan are close to Miller as he dies, saying: “James . . . Earn this. Earn it!”
Flash-forward 50 years to the late 1990s and the elderly James Ryan, accompanied by his family, visits the American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, and discovers Captain John Miller’s gravestone among the thousands of others.
A tearful James Ryan explains how grateful he is to Miller and his unit for saving his life and wonders whether he is worthy of their sacrifices. Ryan’s wife comforts him and confirms that he is indeed a “good man”. Ryan then salutes Miller’s grave.
The D-Day landing sequence was shot over a three-week period on Curracloe Strand in Ballinesker, Ireland, about 70 miles south of Dublin. The ruined French village of Ramelle was built at a former British Aerospace factory in Hertfordshire, about 20 miles north of London. The set was later reused for Spielberg’s 2001 TV miniseries Band of Brothers.
The Iowa farmstead where Mrs Ryan receives news of three of her sons’ deaths was built near West Kennet in Wiltshire, 85 miles west of London. The skirmish with the German machine-gun nest near a ruined radar installation and the ambush of the German half-track were both filmed in the grounds of Thame Park, about 15 miles east of Oxford.
Captain Miller
Tom Hanks Sergeant Horvath
Tom Sizemore Private Reiben
Edward Burns Private Jackson
Barry Pepper Private Mellish
Adam Goldberg Private Caparzo
Vin Diesel T/4 Medic Wade
Giovanni Ribisi Corporal Upham
Jeremy Davies Private Ryan
Matt Damon Captain Hamill
Ted Danson Old Mrs Ryan
Kathleen Byron
Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) of the 2nd Ranger Battalion has been assigned to take his squad of seven men into France to find Private James Ryan (Matt Damon, pictured at left), whose three brothers have been killed in combat, and get him home to his grieving mother back in the States.
