• I agree it is a great movie. The thing that I appreciate is the realism. American intervention in WWII was not painless.
    D-Day was not a walk in the park. A lot of USA soldiers died in the landing and the breakout. The Victory was achieved also for the willingness and the ability of soldiers, that fought and won a fundamental battle in the history of the WWII.
    Victory was achieved not only for the strategic plans of the generals!


  • @Gewehr:

    Saving Private Ryan, probly thee best movie out there about operation overlord. I’m watchin it right now on TNT (chnl 36)  :mrgreen:

    One of my favorite movies.

    only bad part is that f***ing upom dude….he should’ve got shot strait in the head by that one german sniper from the bell tower.  :x

    Easy there, boy.
    I think you’re missing a key plot element here.
    He’s a reporter, not a soldier.
    Anyway, why do you say he should be shot?


  • yea, i know, but still, tom hanks shoul’ve been able to relize when he was screwing up at the begining, and that he told him that he’d only fired his gun once in basic and had no combat experice, that should’ve been a hint. The main reason why I hate him is cuase he hoged all the ammo at the end when evrey one needed it, also he didn’t help out the guys up the stairs when he was getting stabed to death, he just slowly went up the stairs, checked his weapon ect., and the german just walked off. He also let 4-5 germans go after they had surrendered.

    He should’ve got shot so that way tom hanks might not have died, upom’s the one who convinced him to not kill that prisoner at the mg42 nest.


  • @Gewehr:

    yea, i know, but still, tom hanks shoul’ve been able to relize when he was screwing up at the begining, and that he told him that he’d only fired his gun once in basic and had no combat experice, that should’ve been a hint. The main reason why I hate him is cuase he hoged all the ammo at the end when evrey one needed it, also he didn’t help out the guys up the stairs when he was getting stabed to death, he just slowly went up the stairs, checked his weapon ect., and the german just walked off. He also let 4-5 germans go after they had surrendered.

    They were looking for an interpreter - did you miss the part where Upham speaks German and French?
    He was supposed to be a runner for the ammo, but was shell shocked/scared out of his mind because he wasn’t a soldier.
    It wasn’t until the end of the movie, when he realized that sometimes being humane (to a POW) doesn’t mean a thing in war.  So his anger got the best of him at the end, overcame his fear, and he made that particular German pay.
    If you think about, probably the only reason that German didn’t kill him on the stairs was because Upham helped let him go.  But I’ve read that those are two different soldiers…

    He should’ve got shot so that way tom hanks might not have died, upom’s the one who convinced him to not kill that prisoner at the mg42 nest.

    How would have Upham’s death helped for Capt. Miller to survive?  It was a suicide defense, and Capt. Miller’s survival (or anyone else’s) was slim.


  • Still don’t like him. It’s still a realy good movie.  :mrgreen:  :evil:

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    @Gewehr:

    Saving Private Ryan, probly thee best movie out there about operation overlord. I’m watchin it right now on TNT (chnl 36)  :mrgreen:

    only bad part is that f***ing upom dude….he should’ve got shot strait in the head by that one german sniper from the bell tower.  :x

    Only bad part, I can think of, is when they call the Army Air Corps the Air Force.

    I suppose they are inter-change-able terms at that point in history, but it was the AAC, not the USAF.  Just something that annoys me.


  • The  United States Air Force did NOT exist until Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9877 on 18 SEP 1947, which reinforced the National Security Act passed by Congress on 16 JUL 47.

    Prior to those dates, no such entity as the United States Air Force existed.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Correct, Switch.  But I’ve been lectured that the men called the Army Air Corps the Air Force throughout World War II.  Still, it sticks in my craw a little bit.


  • The aircraft branch of USA armed forces was called:

    US Army Air Corp (USAAC) from July 2, 1926 to June 20, 1941
    US Army Air Force (USAAF) from June 20, 1941 to September 17, 1947

    and then as Switvh correctly said from September 18 1947 has been called US Air Force (USAF).

    So in the film I think they are right during D-Day the correct name was USAAF.

  • '19 Moderator

    What year did they start calling them “Wing Nuts”  :evil:


  • Mmm… really I do not know!  :-(

    I should make a little research!

    :-D


  • @dezrtfish:

    What year did they start calling them “Wing Nuts”  :evil:

    I think that ended right about the time General Mitchell used a small squadron of bi-planes to sink a WWI battleship to prove the ability of aircraft for use by the Navy…  :evil:

    That would be the summer of 1921 when Mitchell’s pilots use Martin MB-2 Bombers to sink the “Unsinkable” German Battleship Ostfriesland

  • '19 Moderator

    LOL, Switch I think yo ushould add “Wing Nut” to your list of titles  :-D


  • I’m not trying to draw this off-topic. However, if you really enjoyed SPR, I think you’d LOVE Band of Brothers. Something like 10 1-hour episodes from HBO. It blows Private Ryan out of the water! I highly recommend the DVD set as a b-day or holiday gift. It covers Easy company of the 82 Airborne from Curahee to V-E day. It includes interviews from actual members of Easy Company. The entire series is very historically accurate and based on the true account of these heroic airborne! The drama is incredibly compelling… I can remember getting choked up a few times.

    Awesome series for any big WW2 history fan or the average Joe.

  • 2007 AAR League

    wow i hated every episode.  its like the americans could kill soooooo many germans without suffering terrible casualties themselves.

    when those german machine gunners open up.  they dont miss like in BOB, they would hit 3 guys in the first split second and begin to rake the shit outta everyone else.

    in some instances, from accounts on history channel, there are multiple times that 1-2 mg42’s have taken out a platoon up to a company in 2 minutes - 30 minutes.

    too many times does easy company inflict big casualites and in firefights only have a few wounded or 1 dead.  they may be accurate on what easy company did(where they fought and against what other unit), but not in the details of how many were killed or wounded and when.  you couldnt do that as a director and they dont.

    BOB didnt do it for me on the realism.  realism for me, thats platoon.

  • 2007 AAR League

    when those guys are in the open field with a bad commander telling them to stay put……they would have been wiped out.  not even time to get orders in to take cover.

    or in the second episode where they take out the artillery pieces.  not that easy to take out those types of positions with people shooting back.  that LT would have gotten his ass shot off running around like that.


  • Except he didn’t IRL, so portraying that in the series is historically accurate.  Sorry to bust your bubble.


  • @DrixDzanth:

    I’m not trying to draw this off-topic. However, if you really enjoyed SPR, I think you’d LOVE Band of Brothers. Something like 10 1-hour episodes from HBO. It blows Private Ryan out of the water! I highly recommend the DVD set as a b-day or holiday gift. It covers Easy company of the 82 Airborne from Curahee to V-E day. It includes interviews from actual members of Easy Company. The entire series is very historically accurate and based on the true account of these heroic airborne! The drama is incredibly compelling… I can remember getting choked up a few times.

    Awesome series for any big WW2 history fan or the average Joe.

    I highly recommend it as well, being another Hanks/Spielburg production.  It complements the book rather well.  And it’s the 101st, not the 82nd.  :wink:

    @balungaloaf:

    wow i hated every episode.  its like the americans could kill soooooo many germans without suffering terrible casualties themselves.

    when those german machine gunners open up.  they dont miss like in BOB, they would hit 3 guys in the first split second and begin to rake the sh*t outta everyone else.

    in some instances, from accounts on history channel, there are multiple times that 1-2 mg42’s have taken out a platoon up to a company in 2 minutes - 30 minutes.

    too many times does easy company inflict big casualites and in firefights only have a few wounded or 1 dead.  they may be accurate on what easy company did(where they fought and against what other unit), but not in the details of how many were killed or wounded and when.  you couldnt do that as a director and they dont.

    BOB didnt do it for me on the realism.  realism for me, thats platoon.

    Dude, what’s your problem?
    We are talking about 100 men here, over the course of 3 to 4 years.  They had plenty of casualties, it was just mostly centered on Dick Winters and the men around him.  Do you remember the Bastogne episode where the guy is reminiscing over fallen comrades?  That’s just a handful of the guys who died or were wounded.

    Like ieatcrayons says, it’s historically accurate. The 88s Winters and others took was not only a perfect assault, it’s still taught in military theory today. Sorry more people didn’t die for your amusement.

  • 2007 AAR League

    you ever hear of allied propoganda?

    that position was defended by a 50 man german platoon.  the americans are going to lose more than the 5 that you get to see.  as i said, not accurate.

    but you can watch americans mow down tons of germans in this series.  which by all accounts, the US, brits, canadians, french, belgians, dutch, norwegians, and UK empire troops as a whole only killed 1 out of every 9 germanys.  the russians got 8/9 germans.

    the germans with their armor handed our asses to us every time.  the only way we were able to keep going is b/c we had reinforcements for our casualties more than the germans did.  1 german tank can easily take out many american ones.

    like the episode where germans counter attack with some tanks.  like 2-3.  easy fights back until american tanks show up.  to bad they didnt show that most of the time, our shermans with their weak guns couldnt take out german armor from the front.  or that no bazooka man in his life would run 50 yards out into the open.  sit their for 3 minutes and try to shoot a tank.  every german who is not blind would have capped his ass.

    its not accurate.  its entertaining though.


  • That action was on hill 30. about 5-6 panzers roll up for about 10 min and shoot, but not kill anyone. Then 1-2 Shermans roll out of the hedge and destroy every other panzer, and the rest retreat. One hit on those shermans would’ve taken them out. Also when the Shermans did recue hill 30 in real life, 9-10 of them came out, not 2.

    I agree also on the bazoka gunner in the field, honestly, if you were a german soilder, and saw a few guys run out with an anti-tank bazoka and started to shoot at your suport tanks, you would’nt just sit there and do nothing.

    As for the battle of the buldge…seemed fine to me. Altough I think there should’ve been more dead in that bazi chrge to the town, that 88 could’ve easly shot that bail of hay to ashes. Also you never saw that tiger tank fire, in the end it just retreated when it coulv’e been killing off men hiding behind those wooden carts!

    Overall to me it’s a good show. SPR is still better.

    For my war movies, the order is:
    SPR
    BOB (specificaly, the Normandy episodes)
    Black hawk down (even if it enrages me when I see it)
    Letters from Iwo Jima
    Pearl Harbar
    Jarhead
    Flags of our Fathers

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