“Saving Private Ryan” is a cult film for several generations. Inspired by a true story, it is distinguished by ultra-realistic details that are not found in most war films.
A huge success upon its release and a breathtaking pageant, Steven Spielberg’s film We have to save the soldier Ryan has been visible on Netflix for a few weeks. An event for the platform. This war film, inspired by the true story of the Niland brothers, looks back on the dangerous mission of an American squad to find Private James Ryan, whose three brothers have already died on the battlefield, at the time of the landing of June 1944.
And if the reconstruction of the Normandy landings is reproduced with incredible precision and images that moved the whole world when it was released, these are not the only key elements of this very meticulous feature film. Several of the most realistic details, difficult to notice on first viewing, have appeared for a few years, as reruns and SVOD releases progress. Some have been shared on fan forums or moviegoer conversations even recently.
A detail unearthed long after the release of the film
A particularly revealing example was highly commented on in 2021. In We have to save the soldier Ryan, the most attentive spectators noticed that the thumb of Private 1st Class Daniel Jackson (played by Barry Pepper), the famous snipper of the team led by Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks), had a blue mark on the right hand thumb. A bruise visible at several points in the film.
One shot in particular has been unearthed: the one where Jackson aims a rifle at a German enemy in an unbearable atmosphere (at 21 minutes and 43 seconds). The left hand on the trigger (he is left-handed) and the right under the barrel, we can see this mark perfectly. A reference to the “Garand Thumb”, a common injury for American soldiers during the Second World War who regularly got their thumb stuck in the loading mechanism of the M1 Garands, a semi-automatic rifle of the US Army. So, did you notice it?
Swarming with such details, We have to save the soldier Ryan definitely entered the ranking of the best historical films of all time. And with him, Steven Spielberg no longer needs to prove that he is probably the greatest filmmaker of his generation. His last films, like The Fabelmans (2022) or West Side Story (2021), proved once again that he is a virtuoso director.