Recently I watched the movie Saving Private Ryan. This movie takes place in 1944 France as a small group of soldiers in the US Army fight to find and save Private James Ryan and send him home. This movie was directed by Steven Spielberg and was released on June 24, 1998.  Saving Private Ryan covers many genres such as war, drama, action, and adventure throughout the 170-minute film. This movie gives an incredibly realistic insight into what life was really like for individuals during World War II. It shows the real terrors and awful, terrible events that the soldiers had to undergo and keep fighting through. This movie shocked many people with its real depiction of the hardships that grandfathers and great-grandfathers had to undergo. It gave a greater appreciation for the service of our many men and women and their bravery.

I believe Steven Spielberg did an amazing job driving home the purpose of this film. The fear and adrenaline that this strikes into the viewer is incredibly real and made the movie in some ways hard to watch because it was so graphic. Saving Private Ryan showed the new generations the real terror of war, especially World War II. My dad put it best when he said that, “It shot everyone into complete silence and respect after seeing it for the first time.”

The movie not only gave me a greater appreciation for the brave men and women who served but it made me so grateful to be a descendant of men that were brave enough to fight. This movie hit very close to home for many people as most U.S. families are connected to someone who served or died in World War II. The tremendous talent in the acting brought these feelings more and more, as well as the sound and music that set the stage for incredibly factual scenes that one could never even imagine. For the time period that this was released the graphical and visual design are incredible and nothing short of real. All of these factors made for an incredibly strong movie that did very well at the box office and sent a real message into the hearts of many people who had never thought in this way of the bravery of our grandfathers. The only weakness I can really point out is occasionally you would see a background actor that wasn’t very good but other than that almost every aspect of this film was incredible.