10 War Movie Moments You'll Never Forget

9. Mellish's Death - Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan Mellish
Paramount Pictures

Trite though it may be to reiterate the visceral credentials of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan - widely considered one of the greatest war films ever made - it is those very credentials that have enshrined it as a watershed moment in the war movie genre.

Although not the first film to depict the Second World War in stark, brutal terms, it was certainly one of the first to frame it in such a frenetic, uncompromising way. 35 years prior Robert Mitchum and co. darted off the beaches of Normandy in Darryl F. Zanuck's The Longest Day with barely a scratch. In Saving Private Ryan, those same troops were torn apart by Nazi bullets and artillery, mowed down in their landing craft, and drowned in the icy waters of the English Channel.

As effective as Saving Private Ryan's opening sequence is (and it is a masterclass from Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński), arguably the film's most affecting death comes way later, as the remaining troops in the unit of Tom Hanks' Captain Miller bunker down with the Ryan they were looking for (Matt Damon), and attempt to hold off a Nazi advance.

It's another immaculately arranged action sequence, yet again punctuated by sudden, unforgiving death, but it also delivers Saving Private Ryan's most harrowing moment, when Adam Goldberg's Mellish is overpowered by an SS soldier and stabbed to death. Goldberg is hauntingly believable as Mellish desperately pleads for his life, with the whole nauseating affair being capped off by a distraught Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies) powerlessly watching on from the side.

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