Saving Private Ryan

Other mistake: Private Mellish and another fellow Airborne soldier are manning the .30 cal belt fed machine-gun, and they're quickly running out of ammunition. Private Upham is the ammo bearer, he's supposed to be "Johnny on the spot" with the ammo. After Mellish displaces and sets up a new field of fire he tells Upham to get more .30 cal and to tell the Captain the flank's going to collapse. As Upham is dodging German gunfire he runs by a wall covered with fresh red blood spray. Nobody from that crew was shot yet. (02:15:29 - 02:17:00)

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Suggested correction: It is not blood spray; it is red wine. There are two bottles in the cabinet beside Upham. Just before he leaves to get more ammo, a few shots come into the room, hitting the cabinet and the bottles, spraying red wine onto the wall.

Other mistake: When attacking the Tiger, they lift the hatch to throw in hand grenades. This hatch is actually the top of an oil drum. (02:17:00)

Other mistake: When Ryan and Miller are using the mortars without the tube, there is one shot of a German soldier being hit and falling forward. A couple of seconds later this same shot is used again. (02:21:30)

Ssiscool

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Suggested correction: They are different shots. When the first soldier is blown up, there is only one soldier visible behind him. When the second soldier is blown up, you can see multiple soldiers behind him. Also, the second soldier has a limb blown off, which can be seen in the explosion, whereas the first did not.

Other mistake: In the final battle where the two rangers are waiting for Upham to bring them 30cal ammo, they fire their rifles through a hole in the wall. At one point two German soldiers are seen dying from the same shot, even though they are at least five meters (about sixteen feet) apart.

Other mistake: When the squad is walking in the field with Mellish singing, they see a halftrack and take cover. Once the halftrack gets shot at by the bazooka, Miller moves to the side of the halftrack shooting the fleeing soldiers. After that, he reloads his Thompson. Then, at the beginning of the last battle, Miller reloads his Thompson for the second time. There is no explanation why he would throw away what is considered a perfectly good cartridge.

Other mistake: When Melish is stabbed by the German soldier, Melish's body isn't consistent with the floor. It's almost as if he his lying underneath the floor.

Tony

Other mistake: In the final battle scene, soldiers jump on top of a German tank and throw a few grenades in. While the sound of the grenade's fragments bouncing around the tank can be heard, there is no sign of the actual explosion.

Al12345

Continuity mistake: When they go to find Private Ryan there are eight of them, when they go to a French town and Caparzo picks up the little girl and he gets killed there are seven, right? Wrong. A few scenes later, the camera shows all eight of them marching on to the next town, only in a far away camera shot so it's hard to see. (01:23:11)

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Trivia: The movie was shot in chronological order, which is unusual for a film. Spielberg chose to shoot it that way so that the actors would feel like they were going through the experience in the same order as the characters they play, and they lose friends on the way. This helped create the resentment towards Ryan, who doesn't share the journey with them.

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Question: Jackson, the sniper of Miller's crew, states that if he was in a mile of Adolf Hitler, he would kill him. So, as they were driven to the beach, why didn't Jackson and other snipers try to pick off the the German guys who were firing the at the boats as the Americans left them?

Answer: Sniping needs stability - the movement of the waves under the boat would disrupt their aim so badly that they wouldn't have much hope of hitting anything.

Tailkinker

Answer: Also, the machine gunners were under heavy cover. No one had a good shot at them.

Brian Katcher

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