History Film / SavingPrivateRyan

* GoodNewsBadNews: Private Ryan, the bad news is that all of your brothers were killed in combat. The good news is that you got a free ticket home.

** Along with the FreezeFrameBonus mentioned down page, [[spoiler: the old man at the Normandy cemetery has very bright blue eyes. A close closeup of Captain Miller's eyes later on shows they are green, another hint that it's not Miller in the opening scene. When we meet Ryan, though, his eyes are that same bright blue. Hmm...]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: While dealing with Reiben's griping, Captain Miller sarcastically quotes, "I feel heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan, and I'm willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men, especially you, Reiben, to ease her suffering." [[{{Irony}} Guess who the sole survivor of the squad is...]]

** A single company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion ''did'' participate in the Omaha Beach landing, but only because their boats lost course and landed at Omaha by accident. They certainly weren't supposed to be in the Dog Green sector as the film suggests, the Ranger Assault Group's actual objective at Normandy was Pointe Du Hoc.

* DeathByIrony: Many of the main characters' fates are ironic in some way. [[spoiler:Miller is killed by the very same German prisoner he mercifully spares at the midpoint of the movie. Steamboat Willie (the German who kills Miller) is coldly executed by Upham (the only other American to defend him) after he witnesses him shoot Miller fatally in the chest. Mellish is killed by his own knife (the one he took off a German on Omaha Beach) after a struggle with a Waffen-SS soldier. Wade, the team's medic, is [[MercyKill mercy-killed]] via morphine overdose. Reiben and Upham, respectively the one who vocally disagreed with the mission the most and the other a completely new arrival to the squad with absolutely no combat experience whatsoever, end up the only members of the squad who survive the entire movie and successfully bring Ryan home to his mother safely.]]

->''"Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess. Like you said, Captain, maybe we do that, we all earn the right to go home.''''

!!''Saving Private Ryan'' provides examples of:

The film earned near-universal praise from audiences and critics alike; it was the highest-grossing domestic film of 1998 (second-highest-grossing worldwide), and received eleven nominations in that year's UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s (winning five). Notably the film won Best Director for Spielberg but lost Best Picture (to ''Film/ShakespeareInLove''), a rare occurrence in Oscar history.