Product Description

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 01/11/2005 Run time: 169 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5424 in DVD
• Brand: Paramount
• Released on: 2004-05-25
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 170 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds.

A stalwart Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers have recently been killed in action. It's a public relations move for the Army, but it has historical precedent dating back to the Civil War. Some critics of the film have labeled the central characters stereotypes. If that is so, this movie gives stereotypes a good name: Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the hotheaded Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew, Vin Diesel as the oversize Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the soulful medic, and Jeremy Davies, who as a meek corporal gives the film its most memorable performance.

The movie is as heavy and realistic as Spielberg's Oscar-winning Schindler's List, but it's more kinetic. Spielberg and his ace technicians (the film won five Oscars: editing (Michael Kahn), cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), sound, sound effects, and directing) deliver battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut. The violence is extreme but never gratuitous. The final battle, a dizzying display of gusto, empathy, and chaos, leads to a profound repose. Saving Private Ryan touches us deeper than Schindler because it succinctly links the past with how we should feel today. It's the film Spielberg was destined to make. --Doug Thomas

DVD features
In many ways, the extras from this 2004 version could have been included in the initial 1999 DVD release. Laurent Bouzeraeu, the usual director of Spielberg DVD features, smoothly creates several segments on the making of the film, a refreshing change after Spielberg's other lauded World War II DVD, Schindler's List, did not give fans anything on the film's craft. About 90 minutes of new material is here, showing how the famous D-Day invasion was created, the historical facts of the story, and how the actors were trained through an abbreviated "basic training." There are plenty of interview snippets with Spielberg and his cast, but all of them were shot on the film's set; there is no years-later retrospection about the film. Only a new interview, with Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, puts the film in perspective--and hails the arrival of DVD. The same excellent DVD presentation of the film is on this new set; however, a DTS soundtrack can only be found on the World War II Collection. --Doug Thomas

From The New Yorker
Steven Spielberg's new picture, one of his best, is a sandwich. The meat of the tale concerns a bunch of U.S. Army Rangers, led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), who are sent into Normandy to rescue Ryan (Matt Damon), the sole survivor of four brothers. On either side of this bold endeavor you get half an hour of unyielding combat: first, the D Day landings on Omaha Beach and, later, a consummate last stand in which too few Americans try to hold an inland bridge against too many Germans and too many tanks. Most viewers will be impressed but unsurprised by the central section; it feels wrought, and finely scripted (by Robert Rodat), and nudged by sentimentality. The reason that they will carry the movie lodged in their minds is the infernal, brain-shaking quality of the battle scenes; Spielberg obviously decided that blood and guts meant just that, and so he arranged his violence into a semblance of pure disorder. The illusion holds, complete with severed limbs and wellsprings of blood, and it feels honorable; Spielberg's preachy movies can be an awful grind, but, apart from a disposable coda, this new work is too swift (and often too inaudible) to weigh you down. It feels like an atonement for the sins of "Amistad." -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker