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1. Who directed Saving Private Ryan?
Steven Spielberg
Spielberg won his second directing Oscar for it, though the film lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love. He shot it in sequence so the cast would be as worn down as their characters by the end; Malick's The Thin Red Line opened the same year.
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2. Who plays Captain John Miller?
Tom Hanks
Hanks was nominated again, four years after his back-to-back wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. The squad actors went through a punishing boot camp under Marine veteran Dale Dye, and when the others voted to quit, Hanks talked them into staying.
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3. Who plays Private James Ryan?
Matt Damon
Spielberg cast Damon before Good Will Hunting had come out, after Robin Williams introduced them, then kept him out of the cast's boot camp so the others would resent him on screen. Edward Norton reportedly turned Ryan down to make American History X.
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4. Which Normandy beach is shown in the opening combat sequence?
Omaha Beach
Miller's men are Rangers landing on the Dog Green sector, the deadliest stretch of Omaha. The sequence runs close to half an hour, and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski stripped the coating from his lenses to give it the look of combat newsreel.
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5. Why is Ryan being sent home?
His three brothers have died
War Department typists notice three death notices headed for the same Iowa farmhouse, and General Marshall orders Ryan found, reading aloud Lincoln's letter to a Mrs. Bixby who lost five sons. The real Niland brothers of New York loosely inspired the story.
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6. How many men make up Miller's search squad, including Miller?
Eight
Miller, Horvath, Reiben, Mellish, Caparzo, Wade and Jackson make seven, and Upham, a clerk who has never fired his weapon in combat, is pulled in as the eighth for a skill nobody else has. Reiben keeps doing the arithmetic out loud, eight lives against one.
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7. What does Sergeant Horvath collect in tins from each campaign?
Soil from each battlefield
Horvath carries tins marked Africa and Italy, and once the shooting on Omaha slackens he scoops up French sand for a third. Tom Sizemore plays him, and it is Horvath who argues that saving Ryan might be the one decent thing they get out of the war.
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8. Which soldier is the squad's sniper?
Jackson
Jackson, played by Barry Pepper, murmurs verses from the Psalms as he lines up each shot, and he takes out the sniper who kills Caparzo by firing straight through the man's scope. He dies in a bell tower at the end, when a tank gun finds him.
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9. In which village does the squad finally find Ryan?
Ramelle
Ramelle is an invented village, built for the film on a disused airfield in England; the real crossings the airborne fought for were at La Fiere and Chef-du-Pont. The squad gets there only after a mix-up sends them to the wrong James Ryan, from Minnesota.
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10. What special role does Upham fill in the squad?
Translator
Upham speaks French and German and is writing a book about the brotherhood of soldiers, which his new comrades find hilarious. Jeremy Davies plays him, and his freezing on the stairs while Mellish dies is the film's most argued-over moment.
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11. What does Captain Miller's right hand do that worries his men?
It shakes uncontrollably
The tremor is there in the first shot of him on the landing craft, and it is worse each time it appears. Miller never explains it, and the men, who run a betting pool on his past rather than ask him anything directly, politely pretend not to see it.
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12. Who plays Private Caparzo?
Vin Diesel
Spielberg had seen Diesel's short film Multi-Facial and had the part written for him. Caparzo is the first of the squad to die, shot by a sniper in the rain at Neuville while carrying a girl to safety, and his bloodied letter home is passed from man to man.
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13. What was Miller's civilian occupation?
English teacher
He tells them during the near-mutiny after Wade's death: English composition at Thomas Alva Edison High in Addley, Pennsylvania, plus baseball in spring. It ends the betting pool, and he adds that he has changed so much his wife might not know him.
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14. What strategic structure is Ryan's unit defending when Miller finds him?
A bridge
The paratroopers are holding a bridge over the Merderet, and Ryan refuses to leave them. The squad stays, improvising sticky bombs from socks and axle grease, and Miller dies on the bridge as the P-51s arrive. John Williams's score sits out the battle.
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15. Where was the Omaha Beach landing actually filmed?
Curracloe Beach in Ireland
Omaha was recreated at Curracloe in County Wexford, with hundreds of Irish Army reservists as the invading extras, over the better part of a month. Several men who lose limbs on the beach were played by amputees in prosthetics rigged to come away.
