Set in 1944 in Normandy, France, during World War II, it follows a group of soldiers, led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), on a mission to locate Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) and bring him home safely after his three brothers have been killed in action.

Inspired by the books of Stephen E. Ambrose and accounts of multiple soldiers in a single family, such as the Niland brothers, being killed in action, Rodat drafted the script, and Paramount Pictures hired him to finish writing it.

On June 6, 1944, the U.S. Army lands at Omaha Beach as part of the Normandy invasion, incurring major losses against the artillery and machine gun fire of the heavily fortified German forces.

Initially dazed by the chaotic battle, 2nd Ranger Battalion Captain John H. Miller takes command of a surviving group and leads a successful infiltration behind German lines to secure victory.

Miller is tasked with recovering Ryan and assembles a detachment of soldiers to accompany him: Mike Horvath, Richard Reiben, Adrian Caparzo, Stanley Mellish, Daniel Jackson, medic Irwin Wade, and interpreter Timothy Upham, who lacks any combat experience.

Wade admonishes Reiben, Mellish, and Jackson for callously searching through a pile of deceased soldiers' dog tags in front of passing troops, hoping to find Ryan's among them and conclude their mission.

The cast also includes Glenn Wrage as Doyle, Corey Johnson as a radioman, John Sharian as Corporal Loeb, and Rolf Saxon as Lieutenant Briggs—Allied soldiers at the Omaha beach landing.

[10][11][12] The Ryan family was based on the four Niland brothers detailed in Ambrose's book, who were deployed during WWII; two were killed and a third presumed dead; per the Sole Survivor Policy, the fourth was returned from the war.

[10][15] Rodat thought that Paramount would cancel the project after the studio purchased two other WWII-era scripts, Combat and With Wings as Eagles, with popular actors Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached, respectively.

[35] The Normandy cemetery scene was based on Spielberg's own experience visiting the area as a youth; he witnessed a family accompanying a man who fell to his knees and began to cry at a grave marker.

[42][43][44] At Hanks's and Dye's suggestion, Spielberg had the principal cast take part in a six-day boot camp, wanting them to experience cold, wet, and exhaustive conditions, like those of WWII soldiers.

[f] Overseen by Dye and retired U.S. marines, the actors remained in character while simulating attacks, performing 5-mile (8 km) runs with full backpacks, weapons training, military exercises, and push-ups after making mistakes, on three hours of sleep per night in cold and rainy conditions.

[12][13][25] Beaches researched in England and Scotland lacked either the aesthetics or amenities required, such as housing for the crew, and the filmmakers needed a specific depth for the cast to leap from the landing crafts into the water.

[m][ii] Kamiński chose to render his footage using Technicolor's proprietary ENR process (similar to a bleach bypass) which retained more silver in the film stock and produced deeper blacks.

[63][64] Godzilla and Armageddon were expected to be the biggest successes, while industry executives were hopeful for smaller budget films (costing less than $60 million) like Small Soldiers, The Negotiator, The Parent Trap, and There's Something About Mary to become sleeper hits.

[64][63][10] Saving Private Ryan was highly anticipated but analysis suggested the film faced commercial limitations because of its long runtime, restricting the number of times it could be screened daily, and its violent content.

[10][64][63] DreamWorks' marketing chief Terry Press said it was risky to release a serious drama in the summer, a time generally reserved for family and escapist entertainment, but this was offset by Spielberg and Hanks's popularity.

Despite expectations, the biggest successes had relatively modest budgets, such as Saving Private Ryan, There's Something About Mary, Rush Hour, and The Waterboy, while the anticipated blockbusters, such as Godzilla and Armageddon, were so expensive to make that they were less profitable.

[o] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan described the film as darker and more pessimistic than any of Spielberg's previous works, dispelling the mythos of WWII as staunchly good heroes fighting against evil forces, to depict the reality of combat where, "American soldiers mock virtue and shoot surrendering Germans, where decent and altruistic actions tend to be fatal, where death is random, stupid and redeems hardly anything at all".

[p] Focus was on the "horrifying," "visceral," "brutal," "shocking," and "fierce" violence present in the opening battle, described by Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman and Time's Richard Schickel as one of the most revolutionary film sequences ever made.

[86][85][58][81] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Schickel compared it with the energy and dread of similar scenes in the Vietnam war film Platoon (1986), but with a grander scope depicting masses of men killing each other from afar, drawing the "horror" out of a lengthy, sustained sequence, without the audience being allowed to become desensitized.

[88] Turan and Jonathan Rosenbaum found that, outside of the combat, the script was effective but uninspired and derivative of war films by other directors, such as Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, and Francis Ford Coppola.

[90][91] At the 71st Academy Awards, Saving Private Ryan won Best Director (Spielberg), Best Cinematography (Kamiński), Best Film Editing (Kahn), Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Ronald Judkins), and Best Sound Effects Editing (Rydstrom and Richard Hymns) while it was nominated for Best Actor (Hanks), Best Original Screenplay (Rodat), Best Music (Williams), Best Production Design (Sanders and Lisa Dean Kavanaugh), and Best Makeup (Lois Burwell, Conor O'Sullivan, Daniel C.

[92] Saving Private Ryan's unexpected loss of Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love is seen as one of the biggest upsets in the awards history and led to DreamWorks executives accusing its producers, Miramax, of "overly aggressive campaigning".

[110] Several publications highlighted the accuracy of the Omaha Beach assault, down to the sound of gunfire, although some errors were noted, such as bullets killing soldiers underwater, the absence of British coxswains steering the boats, and the battle's truncated duration.

[u] Many films about the Vietnam War depicted its American combatants as self-hating, "deeply troubled, or even psychotic," offered little respect, and portrayed the conflict itself as one mired in dread, anxiety, and general negativity.

[139] Unlike some older WWII films that portrayed the soldiers as infallible heroes, Saving Private Ryan presents battles fought by brave but frightened civilians, the majority of whom at Omaha Beach were not combat veterans.

[143][144] Miller's experience means he is conscious of the risk involved in releasing Willie, but he is simultaneously struggling to cling to his own humanity and decency, believing that every time he kills he is moving "farther from home".

"[150] American academic Paul Fussell similarly decried Saving Private Ryan for providing an "honest, harrowing, 15-minute opening" of Omaha Beach before descending into more broadly acceptable action-adventure fare.

[v] Vanity Fair wrote, "no films about combat made since would look the way they do without the de-saturated, handheld, blood-splatters-and-all horror of cinema that is this extended sequence ... it's a terrifying scene, either honorable or exploitative in its all vérité, depending on whom you ask.