"Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess. Like you said, Captain, maybe we do that, we all earn the right to go home.''
—Sgt. Horvath
Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 war film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel, Ted Danson, and many more Hollywood men.The film's setting is World War II, beginning with D-Day — namely, Omaha Beach, where "hell's doors were open" and the Allied soldiers faced the first waves of Nazi resistance. There, Capt. Miller (Hanks) and his company slowly penetrate the German defenses leading to a breakout from the beach.After the Omaha Beach invasion, General George C. Marshall receives the news that three brothers with the last name "Ryan" have all died in combat — two during the Normandy landing, the third in the Pacific — and the location of the fourth, who dropped into France as a paratrooper, is unknown. Miller receives orders to search for the fourth and last Ryan (Damon) so that Ryan can be sent home, and he quickly assembles a small squad to carry out the task.After going through many French cities and losing two men, Miller's unit finally finds Ryan — but there's a problem: Ryan is with a small group of soldiers who have been ordered to protect a bridge from the Germans, and he steadfastly refuses to leave behind "the only brothers" he has left. Outnumbered and outgunned by advancing German forces, Miller and the rest of his squad put it all on the line for the survival of just one man.The film earned the praise of audiences and critics alike; it was the highest-grossing domestic film of 1998 (second-highest-grossing worldwide), and it received eleven nominations in that year's Academy Awards (winning five). A notable fact was that Steven Spielberg won the award for Best Director, but the film itself lost to Shakespeare in Love, making Ryan one of the few films in the modern history of the Awards to do so.
Always a Bigger Fish: The sniper kills wave after wave of German infantry without fear of retribution - until he stares down the barrel of a Tiger II in the final battle. From a clocktower, no less.
Anyone Can Die: "Can" hardly does it. Only 3 men survive the battle of Ramelle. Two don't even make it that far.
Armor Is Useless: A field doctor fixes up a wounded man at D-Day, only for another bullet to go through the victim's helmet as he works, killing him.
In what appears to be a subversion, another scene has a soldier's helmet getting hit with a bullet. However it went through in such a way that it barely missed his head.
Badass and Child Duo: Sadly averted. One of soldiers tries to take a kid to save it from war and the parents wanted it to happen, but were ordered not to. He didn't listen, but was shot as he was taking the girl in hands.
Badass Crew: Everyone in Miller's squad has their moments.
Bad News, Good News: Private Ryan, the bad news is that all of your brothers were killed in combat. The good news is that you got a free ticket home.
Ryan chose to stay
Bald of Evil: The Germans all have buzzcuts, despite the average hair length in the Wehrmacht being 1-2 inches, perhaps to make them look like skinheads. The extras who played the Germans were part of a living history group, and they all had authentic haircuts; they tried to argue about the headshaving, but were overruled by the director.
Bilingual Bonus: Not all of the defenders at Normandy in the film were German.
"Please don't shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn't kill anyone, I am Czech!"
Which is actually something of a Truth in Television: a number of German forces garrisoned on the Normandy beaches were non-German foreigners (usually from Eastern Europe) who were forcibly pressed into service.
Two of them were Korean.
Book Ends: The film starts and finishes with the American flag.
Boring, but Practical: At the tipping point of frustration over not being able to find Ryan, Miller simply yells out Private Ryan's name over and over as a rally of parachuters walk by. Sure enough, one of Ryan's company recognizes the name and tells Miller Ryan was part of a troop headed to Ramelle.
Bottomless Magazines: Very minor example. In the climactic battle, Jackson shoots about 6 or 7 Germans without reloading, even though the M1903 Springfield can only hold 5 rounds at a time.
The M1903 can also have rounds fed in individually, rather than from a clip. It's possible that Jackson is reloading between groups of shots (there's not a wide enough angle to show if this is true or not).
Bowdlerize: Ryan is one of the very rare R-rated aversions. Out of respect to veterans in wake of the film's immense popularity and impact, broadcast and cable networks leave the movie untouched and air it in its original state (sometimes with commercial breaks, sometimes not, but the first commercial break never comes earlier than the end of the Omaha Beach sequence). The film is always rated TV-MA to account for this.
Played straight in-film with the vets' choice of language, though; "fouled up" is used a lot more often than the more colorful version of the phrase.
Break the Cutie: Played hard with Upham. The movie goes through great lengths to point out how he is (almost to an adorable degree,) far more innocent and naive than his fellow squad members (which is justified considering he a not actually a ranger himself, but is rather on loan from Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division.) He is also notably the only member of the squad other than Miller who thinks that they should not execute Steamboat Willie, whom he vociferously defends, and is the only one to actually treat the German prisoner with some compassion and respect. Cut to him by the end of the film, where he has watched just about every friend he's made get brutally offed with extreme prejudice, and personally bears witness to Steamboat Willie (the very German he had defended earlier in the movie) kill both Mellish (whom Upham could have saved, but was too afraid to) and Captain Miller (the man who had shown the German mercy when his entire squad demanded blood, almost causing Reiben to desert because of it.) When Upham once again takes Steamboat Willie prisoner, he murders him in cold blood, becoming the only character in the film Upham has killed.
Bulletproof Human Shield: During the Omaha Beach scene, medics use the body of a dead soldier to successfully shield a wounded man from machine gun fire.
Butt Monkey: Upham spends a sizable portion of the movie as this. Especially apparent once the rest of the squad manages to convince him FUBAR is a German word that he, as their translator, should know, only for him to relentlessly search his German dictionary to no avail. It takes him the better part of the movie to figure it out.
Mellish: (Giving Upham ammunition) Fucked up beyond all recognition.
Upham: (Smokes nervously) Yeah.
(beat)
Upham: FUBAR...
Mellish: (Laughs and slaps him.)
Camera Abuse: Dirt on the lens; blood in the Omaha scene.
California Doubling: The D-Day invasion scene was shot in Ireland. Also, most of the town scenes (Neville-au-Plain and Ramelle) were shot on single (and quite small) set.
Call Back: The German sniper who had killed Carpazo and was later killed by Private Jackson was holed up in a ruined church tower. Ironically, Jackson also met his end while perched in a ruined clock tower in Ramelle.
Chekhov's Gunman: The Nazi machine-gunner who shot Wade and was released by the Americans returns later in the final battle. The last 15 minutes of the film could be characterized as going down with Chekhov's Guns blazing.
Cherubic Choir: Heard in the soundtrack's main theme, Hymn to the Fallen.
Cluster F-Bomb: See The Medic. Wade spends a bunch of time stopping bleeding on a soldier shot in the chest. Right after he's done, another bullet goes right through the soldier's helmet. That was no ordinary soldier that Wade and the medics were trying to save either, he was the battalion surgeon. You can understand why he's cursing so profusely afterward.
Wade: FUCK! Give us a fuckin' chance!
Cold Sniper: Jackson. Although it's worth noting that while he's emotionally cold when he's actually sniping, murmuring Bible verses to himself while calmly lining up his shots, when it comes to his interactions with the rest of the squad he's one of the friendlier and more courteous soldiers in the team.
Confessional: Illustrating the fact that forgiveness of sins doesn't require an actual wooden booth, the camera passes a dying soldier reciting an act of contrition to a Catholic chaplain: "Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee. I detest my sins for having offended thee, O Lord..." This is immediately followed by a shot of a different soldier reciting the Hail Mary in Latin. It should be noted that, under the circumstances, the priest almost certainly did not bother to have the dying man recount his sins individually, and was probably using the act of contrition as a precursor to both sacramental absolution and Extreme Unction.
Reiben: Hey, asshole! Two of our guys died trying to find you, all right?
Ryan: What were their names?
Also serves to humanize Ryan immediately: rather than quickly apologizing for their deaths, he wants to know who they were so that he can bear that burden.
Death by Irony: All the main characters' fates are ironic in some way. Miller is killed by the very same German prisoner he mercifully spares at the midpoint of the movie. Steamboat Willie (the German who kills Miller) is coldly murdered by Upham (the only other American to defend him) after he witnesses him callously shoot Miller fatally in the chest. Jackson, ever the religious sniper, is blown up by a tank in a bell tower because he was too focused on praying and what he was sniping to notice (it also mirrors the fate of the German sniper he killed earlier in the film.) Mellish, heavily implied to be Jewish American, is killed with the same Hitler Youth knife he had picked up earlier in the film. Horvath dies because of his unyielding loyalty to Miller, whom he insists give him the bazooka so he can cover Miller and the rest of the remaining squad's retreat across the bridge. Wade, the team's medic, dies via morphine overdose at the his own behest after he realizes his squad cannot save him from his wounds. Caparzo dies with a letter to his father in his hands because he lets thoughts of home cloud his judgement and situational awareness, taking a young girl who reminds him of his niece and attempting to convince his squad to take her with them, taking his helmet off in the process, standing out in the open, and pointing his finger (which made him a prime target for a sniper, likely having even mistaken him for an officer.) Reiben and Upham, the one who vocally disagreed with the mission the most and a completely new arrival to the squad with absolutely no combat experience whatsoever, respectively, end up the only members of the squad who survive the entire movie and successfully bring Ryan home to his mother safely. Ryan, the very man they had set out to save, goes home physically unscathed, forever feeling the need to lead a good life and be a good man out of a sense of obligation to the men who gave so much to get him home.
Decoy Protagonist: We're led to believe that the man entering the cemetery in the present day is Captain Miller, and that the 95% of the film set in World War II is his flashback. Then Miller dies in the final battle, and it's revealed that the man in the cemetery is actually Private Ryan, who has spent the whole movie recalling the story of how Miller saved his life.
Dirty Coward: Upham is sometimes accused of being this at the final battle when he breaks down in fear upon seeing the advancing German troops while he was supposed to bring ammunition belts to the machine-gun position in the ruined house. As usual, it's easy to judge a character's actions from the comfort of your own living room, but it is actually a realistic portrayal of the psychological issues combatants have to face in war, where not everyone is a cold-blooded killer.
Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: In the opening scene, a soldier who had just had his legs blown off was played by an actor who had lost his legs years before.
Subverted with the one-armed colonel, played by Bryan Cranston, who is not an amputee.
Distracted From Death: On the beach, Miller speaks to a radio man, turns away, goes to talk to the radio operator again and sees that the guy is dead. Also, Sergeant Horvath dies like this too.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: As an extremely bloody and realistic war movie the natural expectation is that it would work solely as an anti-war movie by showing the horror. However, there is a non-trivial section of the audience that found the (lavishly shot) action scenes exhilarating, even glamorous. These reactions are far from mutually exclusive.
Of course, your opinion may take a 180 degree turn when the medics try to stop a soldier from bleeding out, or during the Telegram scene.
Dramatic Sit Down: The epilogue has the old man kneeling in front of the tombstone, overcome by his emotions.
Mrs. Ryan, well aware what the car coming to her house means, crumples to a sitting position on her front porch.
Dueling Movies: This film and The Thin Red Line; they were pitted against each other at the Oscars and amongst war movie buffs. This was more a function of marketing than anything else - The Thin Red Line was significantly slower-paced and more philosophical as compared to Ryan's traditional war movie feel.
Dwindling Party: Out of the original squad sent to find Ryan as well as the entire paratrooper force defending the town of Ramelle, only two members of the original squad and Ryan himself survive when Allied reinforcements finally arrive.
Elites Are More Glamorous: The main characters are Army Rangers and Ryan is a member of the 101st Airborne.
Played with with Upham, who is not a ranger himself, but on loan from the Twenty-Ninth Infantry and has absolutely no combat experience.
Enforced Method Acting: The actors portraying the rest of the eponymous Ryan's platoon had to go through very realistic, difficult military training. The eponymous Ryan...didn't. Which actually doubles this trope: Damon's exemption was planned to create resentment on the part of the rest of the cast, which mirrored their character's feelings.
Freeze Frame Bonus: If you look really carefully, the old man at the beginning of the film is wearing a 101st Airborne pin on his jacket, which serves as a Spoiler Opening: Miller's squad is drawn from his company of the 2nd Battalion, US Army Rangers while Upham is a clerk on loan from the 29th Infantry Division. Only one major character was in the 101st Airborne: the eponymous Private Ryan.
Heroic BSOD: Upham during the final battle, and Wade on Omaha Beach.
Hollywood History: Unfortunately, this film falls for the same traps as most films involving D-Day: showing the beaches as being only a few dozen yards from the water to the bunkers. In reality, with the landings timed and executed at low tide, the bunkers were roughly◊ 800 yards◊ from◊ the water◊, with the entire few yards from water to bunker an invention of Hollywood. The boat drivers are also all Americans, but in reality, the British were ferrying them.
Hollywood Tactics: During the final battle scene, the Germans send a Tiger (a very immobile tank with a terribly slow turret speed) and some mobile artillery (with exposed crews) up the center of a rubble-strewn village. The Panzergrenadiers that should be ahead of them are in fact hiding behind them as cover. Charging the machine-gun post with the Medic would qualify, were it not for the fact that the whole point of the scene is that Captain Miller is emotional and making bad decisions.
Not so much. The attack on the gun nest is conducted as a three-pronged attack that has pairs of runners run from cover to cover, covered by fire until they come to grenade range. The Germans weren't going to advance on the bridge in the manner they did in the movie, as the paratroopers pointed out to the captain during their preparations, but then he sent the Germans an invitation in the form of Reiben on the back of a small vehicle with his BrowningAutomatic Rifle.
Though there are plenty of instances of infantry following tanks into action during the real war, either due to poor timing, poor training, or stark terror on the infantry's part, as well as heavy tanks, self propelled artillery and and destroyers being used in urban situations due to the Germans using anything they had on hand.
Lets not forget that in the attack on the machinegun nest, Miller chose to assault it directly blatantly telegraphic their presence, putting themselves in the MG-42's field of fire, and putting all of his men at risk, and ignoring the fact that he has at his disposal the very same highly-talented Sniper he used previously on Omaha Beach to neutralize...a machinegun nest.
Then there's the whole Battle of Ramelle. The bridge was strategically unimportant; their mission was just to stop the Germans from using it. Upon seeing it, the real Major Winters (of Band Of Brothers fame) told Speilberg he would've blown up the bridge, and had Engineers replace it. Speilberg told him it wouldn't have been dramatic enough for a movie.
Putting a sniper in the bell tower. Sure, it gives a nice field of fire, but it's also a blatantly obvious place for a sniper. And then they put a machine gun in the tower, with its "SHOOT ME" stream of tracers.
With the exception of the Sticky Bombs; though only one person knew about them, they were in the soldiers' field manual, as he quickly points out. But hitting the 60mm mortar shells before throwing them fits perfectly.
Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The "whack the mortar shell to initiate the fuse and throw it like a football" gambit actually happened, but it was a year later and half a world away on Okinawa. A similar incident occurred in Italy.
Also during the climatic scene, when Horvath's weapon jams while standing right in front of an enemy soldier, the only thing he can think to do is throw his helmet at him. Doing so actually buys him enough time to draw and fire his sidearm.
Kill It with Fire / Man on Fire: A flamethrower is used in the final parts of Omaha Beach (and another is seen blowing up early on and incinerating its user and several others), and several men are immolated with Molotov cocktails in the final battle.
Knife Fight: Noted for being rather psychologically disturbing.
Ludicrous Gibs: The entire film has many instances, including the famous D-Day scene, and the failed result of the aforementioned Improvised Weapons.
MacGuffin: The eponymous Ryan. And later the bridge at Ramelle.
Manly Tears: This movie is famous for the number of veterans who broke down crying watching it in theaters. The final scene, where Ryan - now an old man with his children and grand children at the Normandy Memorial - is crying at Captain Miller's grave. He asks his wife if he lived a good life, echoing Miller's comments to "earn it".
The normally reticent and stoic Captain Miller after Wade dies. Miller can't help but break down and cry at the loss of another one of his men (he remembers the precise number of every man who's died under his command,) and promptly does so, hidden away from his men so none of them can see him cracking.
Major Injury Underreaction: Played realistically, as a result of adrenaline and shock. Sgt. Horvath says "Just got the wind knocked out of me" after he's been shot several times, and a GI on Omaha Beach picks up his arm that was just severed at the shoulder by a mortar shell and walks away with it.
The Medic: Played realistically. No magically getting up and continuing to fight once one medic's arrived; we have teams of three or four medics doing all they can just to keep shrapnel-wound hemorrhaging from being lethal, or to pump the wounded full enough of morphine so they can stop screaming in agony, with no more than they could be carrying on their persons to use on a muddy, bloody beachhead. And no sooner do they congratulate themselves on saving one soldier - at the cost of a LOT of surgical dressings and drugs - does another machine gun bullet punch a single, neat hole through the dome of the soldier's helmet.
Mercy Kill: Played straight with The Medic, inverted with the burning Germans on D-Day ("Don't shoot! Let 'em burn!").
Mexican Standoff: A group of American and German soldiers unexpectedly bump into each other in a bombed-out village, and each shouts, trying to tell the other side to surrender. Ted Danson shows up and blasts the Germans, ending the standoff.
Mistaken Identity: During the mission, the squad finds Private James Ryan and prepare to bring him home, telling him his brothers have been killed. The private then starts bawling and asks how his brothers died, but then mentions they're still in grade-school, prompting the squad to realize they'd run into wrong Private Ryan. Later on, on finding the right Private Ryan, Captain Miller makes sure to confirm he's the right one.
Mood Whiplash: All over the place. Example: one of the more memorable early scenes has Vin Diesel's character find a Hitler Youth knife on a German corpse; he cracks a joke while handing it to the (Jewish) Stanley Mellish, who starts cracking wise and then bursts into tears.
One of the more severe moments is also the most understated: after finding a crashed plane and a group of soldiers, the squad splits up bags of dog tags of KIA soldiers and starts going through them, hoping to find Ryan's so that they can end their crazy mission. They start cracking jokes about some of the names, and they're actually pretty funny, even getting Captain Miller to laugh. Then Wade comes over, points out that they're making light of dead soldiers, in full view of a column of soldiers marching to the front. The whiplash is exceedingly strong.
I think the marching soldiers were actually being relieved at that point - they were Airborne from the pre-D-Day drops who were finally getting to come off the line, after days in action. So our heroes with their dog tags were joking about the recently-killed buddies of the paratroopers walking by.
Needle in a Stack of Needles: Said after the Omaha Beach landing. What are the odds of finding one soldier in a huge army in the middle of a battle?
New Meat: Upham never fought before Miller asked him to join the squad and hasn't handled a weapon since basic training.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Private Caparzo attempts to take a little French girl named Jacqueline with the rest of the squad, at the urging of her parents, because she reminds him of his niece, with the rest of the squad yelling at him not to do it. He gets shot by a sniper for his troubles. That German that Upham convinced Miller to spare and caused the mutiny crisis? He ends up killing Miller later.
No One Gets Left Behind: A large aspect of the movie, which was based on a real event where a 101st soldier was called home after two of his brothers were killed and a third (a fighter pilot) was missing in the China-Burma-India theater of war.
Obligatory War Crime Scene: Narrowly subverted - the patrol is on the verge of executing a captured German after his squad kills Wade, but don't (and after he comes back to battle, loses and surrenders, Upham shoots him). Also, surrendering Czechs are shot at Omaha (with One-Liner: "Look, I washed for supper!")
Also an aversion of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee: you hear all the plans the squad has for fighting the battle of Ramelle, and the get to watch them carry it out.
Oh Crap: Jackson, right before he gets blown up by a German tank.
One Steve Limit: Averted when they find the first James Ryan.
The Oner: Some long takes help the battles get more engaging.
Pinned Down: Captain Miller and the soldiers behind the obstruction on Omaha Beach.
Soldier: Sir, what's the rallying point? Miller: Anywhere but here!
Properly Paranoid: Reiben is against letting their prisoner "Steamboat Willie" walk free, in case he's picked up by the Germans and "thrown back into circulation." Which is not only what happens, but the ex-prisoner also fatally wounds Miller.
Reality Is Unrealistic: The storming of Omaha Beach. It's been praised, especially by WWII vets who were there, for its accuracy yet it looks very little like what movie audiences have come to expect from a big battle (except for the massive casualties).
Red Herring: In the beginning of the film, a World War II veteran collapses in front of a grave and apparently is reliving WWII, and pans to Captain Miller, initially implying that the veteran was Miller as an old man. It is later revealed that Miller was actually killed during the war, and that the veteran was actually the eponymous character of the film.
The Reveal: The company has a pool going on the background of Captain Miller, who never talks about where he's from and what he did before the war. Five bucks get you in the pool. The squad's general belief is that pre-war he was some kind of Badass. Before the war he was a school teacher.
The old veteran visiting the tombstone is PVT Ryan himself, and the tombstone is for CPT Miller.
Retirony: Just as the soldiers find Ryan, they need to engage in a battle for him. There's also Reiben's hilarious story about a customer in his mom's shop, just before he shipped out, showing him her boobs for comfort. And he's one of the few who survive.
Scope Snipe: Jackson nails a German sniper clean through his scope.
The Scourge of God: Jackson apparently thinks himself this. Of course a sniper's job is the sort to make people seem a wee bit odd, anyway.
Screw Your Orders, I'm Staying!: Private Ryan. Rather than leave Ramelle upon finding out that he has a free ticket home, Ryan decides to remain in Ramelle to defend the bridge.
Private Ryan: (upon finding out that he is to be sent home) Hell, these guys deserve to go home as much as I do. They've fought just as hard...You can tell her that when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left. And that there was no way I was deserting them. I think she'd understand that.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: It's implied that Captain Miller is this from the way that his hand shakes uncontrollably when he's either anticipating the stress of upcoming combat, or concerned about his mission.
Shout Out: Upham is chastised for saluting Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks), as it identifies him as an officer to the German snipers. In Forrest Gump, the roles are reversed, as Lieutenant Dan chastises Forrest (also played by Hanks) for saluting him, as it makes him a target for the Vietcong snipers.
Shown Their Work: The film did a very accurate recreation of the D-Day landings with many veterans praising the realistic portrayal of the action.
I knew Omaha was a meat grinder, but seeing it on film, my God, it hit me right in the gut.
The Squad: Played with. The camera lingers briefly on a few of the many soldiers in Captain Miller's landing craft, implying that they are going to be The Squad for the rest of the movie, but most of those men get killed in the first fifteen seconds after the shooting starts, giving a clear indication that this is not going to be your father's war movie. You meet the members of the real squad one at a time during the beach battle, but they don't become The Squad until after.
Take A Moment To Catch Your Death: A soldier on Omaha Beach has a bullet go right through his helmet without touching him. He takes off his helmet and stares at it in wonder—and is plugged right in the forehead.
Take a Third Option: When the squad finally finds Ryan, he adamantly refuses to leave Ramelle, as it'll leave the defense of the bridge even more undermanned. Miller mulls over his two options: forcibly drag him off the battlefield as was ordered or just leave and say that they couldn't find him. He decides to keep the squad there and helps makes further plans to hold the bridge.
Tanks, But No Tanks: Mostly averted; the Tiger and Marder mock-ups are actually quite good, although what the Marders — self-propelled anti-tank guns — were doing taking on a small infantry unit in an urban environment was simply the Germans just using whatever they had to hand. If you know where to look, it's quite easy to tell that the "Tigers" are dressed-up T-34s. The sniper confusingly refers to the Marders as "Panzer tanks, two of 'em" but that's actually Truth in Television: to your average GI all AFVs were tanks and all German tanks were panzers; the only identification they really cared about was shoot/don't shoot. American soldiers had never encountered the Marder before Normandy.
Tempting Fate: Sniping Nazis is great and everything, but doing it in such an overconfident way that a German tank figures out where you're shooting from is bad news.
That's What I Would Do: The Squad comes under attack by a sniper in a French village. The squad's sharpshooter Jackson spots a tall church tower and says, "That's where I'd be". (Also Foreshadowing in that Jackson does later use a church tower.)
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: At one point, the characters throw mortar shells as improvised grenades. Said mortar shells have almost twice as much explosive power as a frag grenade, and most of the throws landed at the feet of single soldiers.
In their defense, the soldiers at this point are out of ammo and about to be overrun, with waves of infantry and a number of tanks literally within spitting distance. Not a time to be picking your targets too carefully.
In the same battle, the Germans use a Flak 38, a gun designed for shooting down aircraft. The results were particularly... realistic.
Title Drop: "Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole, godawful, shitty mess."
Took a Level in Badass: Upham, after his Heroic BSOD. When he snaps out of it, he singlehandedly captures four German soldiers, and executes one that he had released earlier.
True Companions: A clear cut Band of Brothers example. The squad even begins to accept Upham towards the end. Which makes it all the more tragic that he is one of only two squad members to make it to the end of the movie.
YMMV: it's likely that, after being released by the Squad and making it back to German lines, he wasn't given a choice about going back into battle. There's a war on: Germany needed everyone able to carry a weapon fighting the Allied offensive.
But then, he was the one to fatally shoot Captain Miller.
What You Are in the Dark: When Miller and his squad come across a German machine gun nest set up to ambush any approaching Americans, his squadmates point out that they can easily bypass the Germans and nobody would ever know that they were there. However, Miller decides to take out the machine gun because he can't live with himself knowing that more Americans might get ambushed by the machine gun. Also, Miller's squad could have easily just scrubbed the mission and returned to base saying they couldn't find Ryan, but the ultimately decide to stick through it to the end.
What the Hell, Hero?: A good part of the squad calls Miller out on his decision to take out the machine gun nest, even though they could have easily bypassed it or had the sniper take out the entire crew. In the ensuing direct assault, Wade ends up getting killed.
Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: The Squad had a sniper with them, and a clear shot of the nest, yet no one suggests he just shoot them then and there and avoid running directly at the nest.
All Germans Are Nazis: The German soldiers are, by and large, Heer (i.e., the German Army), and act just like the Americans would in their spots, though a number of Waffen-SS soldiers show up at the end.
Those Wacky Nazis: The German soldiers that we see act more or less the same way the Americans do — some of them are just as frightened and freaked out about the war as some of the Allied soldiers.
A perfect example of this one is when the leads are in a village in France, where they later find the wrong Ryan, and while in a ruin a wall crumbles to reveal an equally-sized group of German soldiers. The two groups just train guns on each other and yell at each other until Ted Danson arrives to blow all the Germans away.
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