Details

Release year: 1998

Storyline

Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose comrades have been killed in action.

Top credits

Directors

Steven Spielberg

Writers

Robert Rodat

Cast

Tom Hanks — Captain Miller
Matt Damon — Private Ryan
Tom Sizemore — Sergeant Horvath
Edward Burns — Private Reiben

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Awards

5 wins & 6 nominations

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Did you know

• The Omaha Beach scene cost $11 million to shoot, and involved up to 1,000 extras, some of whom were members of the Irish Army Reserve. Of those extras, 20-30 of them were amputees, issued with prosthetic limbs, to play soldiers who had their limbs blown off.

• All the principal actors, except for Matt Damon, underwent several days of grueling army training. Damon was spared so that the other actors would resent him and would convey that feeling in their performances.

• The two "German" soldiers who are shot trying to surrender were speaking Czech. They were saying, "Please don't shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn't kill anyone, I am Czech!" They were members of what the Germans called Ost [East] Battalions, men, mostly Czech and Polish, taken prisoner in eastern European countries invaded by Germany and forced into the German army. The closed captioning for the film on VHS and DVD/Blu-ray bears this out with the language being labeled as Czech.