50 Greatest Movie Scenes Ever

5. Omaha Beach - Saving Private Ryan

Tom Hanks Saving Private Ryan
Paramount

By the time Saving Private Ryan came out, the war genre had been played out. There was surely no new story to tell after decades of Hollywood drawing on the profoundly emotional period of world history that had left an aching schism on the world, right?

Well, wrong, because nothing had ever been achieved on the scale of Saving Private Ryan nor with the unflinching look at violence that never seeks to fetishise. This was Steven Spielberg turning his gaze upon one of the most unthinkable days in the history of the world, offering a sobering, stunning look at the horror and the spectacle.

There’s no denying the message in there - that there’s no place for jingoism in how these sorts of events are replayed in art - but it’s incredible how deftly Spielberg still crafts an emotional, personal story alongside the huge-scale spectacle. And no matter how many times you see it, it still manages to gut-punch you into slack-jawed submission.

[SG]

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