Saving Private Ryan 1998 film. Starring Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Ed Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi. Directed by Steven Speilberg. Rated R. (Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks) A D-Day Uncompromised By Elizabeth Nix

When Steven Spielberg's World War II epic, Saving Private Ryan, was released in the summer of 1998, it was widely praised for its clear-eyed, authentic portrait of war, as well as of the heroism of ordinary American soldiers.

The Academy Award-winning film opens with a bloody, tough-to-watch re-enactment of American troops landing at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. Following this violent, unsparing D-Day scene, with its 20-plus minutes of non-stop carnage, the film goes on to tell the fictional story of Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, and his band of seven rangers who are sent on a mission to rescue Private James Francis Ryan, a paratrooper missing somewhere behind enemy lines. Ryan's three older brothers have recently been killed in action, so military officials order Miller to find the young soldier and prevent a public-relations disaster.

As the men make their way across the battle-scarred French countryside they suffer several casualties before eventually locating Ryan in a bombed-out village, where he is helping to defend a strategically important bridge from the Germans. Ryan, played by Matt Damon, refuses to leave his comrades, even after Miller gives him the news of his siblings' deaths. Miller reluctantly agrees he and his squad will stay to defend the area. When the Nazis attack, the captain and many of his men are killed; however, Ryan survives. As the film ends, Ryan, now an old man, has returned with his family to Normandy, where he salutes Captain Miller's burial cross.

While Private Ryan was a fictional character, the story is inspired by real events: Following the deaths of the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, on the USS Juneau in November 1942, the U.S. War Department established the Sole Survivor Policy to protect remaining family members from combat duty. Ryan's character is based on Sergeant Frederick "Fritz" Niland, a member of the 101st Airborne, who was accidentally dropped behind enemy lines during World War II. He eventually made it back to his unit, where he was informed that two of his brothers had died at Normandy and the third had gone missing in Burma. Niland was sent home to Tonawanda, New York, but his family tragedy had a somewhat happier ending than Ryan's or the Sullivans': His brother who was believed to have died in the Far East was eventually found alive during the liberation of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

As for the other historical aspects of Saving Private Ryan, from costumes to weapons, the film gets most of the details right. Many of the lead actors even attended boot camp before production began. More importantly, unlike some earlier World War II films, which present a romanticized view of the battlefield, Saving Private Ryan provides an unflinching look at the chaos, gore and brutality of military combat. The film, which is rated R, reportedly came close to garnering an NC-17 rating for its graphic battle scenes. And, while some war films feature soldiers who are more like robotic fighting machines than humans, Spielberg's soldiers are fallible men with very real doubts and fears, and this makes their accomplishments all the more heroic in the end.