He killed one man there with a headshot, and on his second shot there seems to be an explosion at the machine gun post.
What is supposed to have happened there?
Good question. Maybe he hit some kind of explosive like a grenade?
Great scene, ruined by that guy crying like a bitch at the end.
I think 'that guy crying like a bitch', as you so artfully put it, was a perfectly appropriate and well placed shot after the horror of the beach assault.
shareI get that, but understatement is a very important factor in film-making. Every good thing this film does is undone by something cheesy and over the top.
John Milius once talked about this in an interview, saying that Spielberg asked him to contribute to the script and he refused, saying it was gimmicky. One example he used was the story of Ryan saying he cock blocked his older brother because the girl looked like she "hit every branch on the ugly tree".
He said this was cruel and, by saying this and spying on his brother, it made him look like a) a perv and b) a douche, thus they went all that way to save a guy who was better off being thrown under a panzer.
"One example he used was the story of Ryan saying he cock blocked his older brother because the girl looked like she "hit every branch on the ugly tree"."
https://youtu.be/MbH_WdRbaN0?si=Ss-jKbB3iRR8bp2N&t=303
I'll agree on that one.
Is it the kind of thing men joke about among themselves sometimes? Yes. Is it malicious? No.
But in the context of this movie, it wasn't something that portrayed Ryan in a good light. We even see Miller appearing not to think the comment was funny.
That's true. Here is John Milius's comments on SPR if you're interested:
MILIUS: There was a horrible scene where Matt Damon starts talking about something they did to an ugly girl, and how ugly this girl was that they were all screwing or something, and right there, you just say, "Why'd these guys come over like this to save this little creep?" Just put him out there and let the tanks run over him. Sacrifice him to the Panzer God right now. Blow up the bridge and leave, fellas.
IGNFF: What was your enjoyment or lack of enjoyment factor for Private Ryan?
MILIUS: Well, I think the script is not very good. It has enormous holes in it, some of which I was tasked to fill. I was burned out after Rough Riders. I was separated from my wife, and Steven wanted me to come over and shoot second unit on Private Ryan and fix the script and everything. I just didn't want to do any of that ... I said, "This is a bad thing. This is a gimmick film." Which is the worst part of it, because he likes gimmick films. He loves gimmicks, and he makes very good gimmicks. He's very good at making gimmick films.
That film is a gimmick film. The last brother and all this kind of stuff. He's off there and now they have to go find the last brother. Of course, you've got this terrible hole in it that they take what's left of this ranger company that got shredded and saying to them, "You're on the beach here." There's a whole peninsula, this is historically what's going on, and beyond our lines here, there's probably five German divisions, into which we've dropped three whole divisions of 17,000 men each – two American, one British. They're out there too, somewhere. That's how many men, about 60,000 American Allied troops, and probably about 100,000 Germans out there, fighting. And you're going to go out and find this guy?
IGNFF: What would have been the reason?share
MILIUS: What they should have done is they should have said – which was the only logical thing, that I as a writer ask, is what was this Private Ryan doing? Nobody ever says that. He's a paratrooper, that's what he's doing. Well, he had a job, and so what was the job of the paratroopers? What was the job of the 101st and the 82nd? Well, one of the jobs was that there was just five or six bridges on the Merderet River. They wanted to take these bridges so that we could get out of Normandy and get out of the Hedgerows. They never explain that. If they had a little briefing where they said, "There are these five bridges, we're going to go to the first one," that the Brits took, which was Pegasus Bridge, and "We're going to go there, and then we're going to go to the next one. We don't know who has that bridge yet." When they get there, maybe it's being fought over, or maybe they blew it up or something like that. They don't find him there. Then as they're going from bridge to bridge, the tension is building. When you get to the last bridge, you say, "That's where he's got to be!"
IGNFF: And it's something that easily could have been fit into the rest of the structure
MILIUS: Yeah, and they could sit there and they say, "Well, he was dropped on the such and such bridge, he was with the 505th ... and that's where he'd likely be." Then you've got a reason for him being there, or them finding him.
IGNFF: What other plot holes did you see?
MILIUS: Well the other thing that's a big hole that I heard Colin Powell commented on when he looked at it – at the end when that battle is taking place, he said, "Blow the bridge and leave, fellas."
IGNFF: Can't get more succinct than that.
MILIUS: Yeah, and as Oliver (Stone) told me – he said that Tom Hanks had told him, "This is the decent thing to do, to stay and hold this bridge." He (Stone) said, "I wouldn't have waited until he turned his back and got into the jungle to frag him – I'd have just shot him right there."
IGNFF: The decent thing to do.
MILIUS: He said part of it was he'd have shot him because he was Tom Hanks. I think Oliver just would like to shoot Tom Hanks anyway, just to see which way he'd fall. I think that the other thing was the ridiculousness of it – they're holding this bridge against the f***ing Panzer regiment, or something? I mean, these guys have M1s. They've got rifles. They're going to hold this bridge against the Panzer regiment? That's just nuts
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IGNFF: But does it surprise you or not surprise you that somehow Steven was able to pull it off, in the eyes of the audience?
MILIUS: No, because it's extremely well-directed. It's just superb. What's really great about the direction in that movie, is that there's a lot of lines that aren't very good, and when the people say them, they're okay. He got really good performances out of people, and he got little nuances and stuff. He's really learned his tricks over the years, and it looks really good. During the battle, you're on the edge of your seat – it was this real good-looking battle.
IGNFF: What was your opinion of the first 25 minutes?
MILIUS: That's just wonderful.
IGNFF: Did you see Steven as being capable of it?
MILIUS: It's funny, I talked to him before he did it, and I suggested that he use a lot of handheld, because I used a lot of handheld in Rough Riders, and I thought it was very effective. And he did use a lot of handheld, but he sort of went further than that. He got the whole thing, he had certain rules, like the camera never got very high, because you could get shot, you know? Things like that. I thought that the battle would be too slick, and it wasn't slick at all. It was really good.
IGNFF: And you think that was definitely helped by the handheld camera use?
MILIUS: Yeah, but it was just the way of doing the whole thing. It was very, very well done. There were some wonderful physiological things in that battle. For about the first ten minutes of that battle, nobody's shooting back. So you, as the audience, begin to feel very helpless.
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IGNFF: I never actively noticed that. Do you think it was almost a subliminal thing?
MILIUS: I think he planned it that way. Of course, when you read everything in there, it was in Ambrose. When you read Ambrose's account, you sort of get that feeling in the first wave. They abandoned their guns and just ran up to the sea wall. There was this huge mob of demoralized men at the sea wall when the second wave came in. Not a huge mob, because a lot of them had been killed.
IGNFF: So, did you actually think that Spielberg was capable of filming that first 25 minutes?
MILIUS: Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of Schindler's List. I think that's his best movie