Unclear and Present Danger - Saving Private Ryan

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic, Saving Private Ryan, starring Tom Hanks, Ed Burns, Matt Damon and Tom Sizemore, among many other notable actors. Set in 1944 during and after the D-Day landing, Saving Private Ryan follows a group of soldiers on a mission to locate Private James Francis Ryan and bring him home to safety after his three brothers were killed in action. Saving Private Ryan was released to wide acclaim. It was commercially successful and easily one of the most influential movies of the decade. We discuss that, and much more, in the episode.As always, remember to check out our Patreon, where we do episodes on the films of the Cold War and maintain a weekly politics podcast. You can find that at patreon.com/unclearpod.Next episode? John Frankenheimer’s Ronin.

Dear Mr. Brian Boyd, no doubt by now you have received full information about the untimely death of your son. However, there are some personal details that I thought. Believe very strongly. No words of mine can ever reveal. It was a fine soldier regarding the circumstances leading to his death. He felt his loss tremendously. Roberts commanding officer. He was a heroic service to his country.

A great soldier. The great soldier. The grace of God and the aid of your son, I'm alive. Please accept my most sincere condolences. He will live in our memories. To you my deepest sympathy. Colonel, I've got something you should know about. Yes.

These two men die in Normandy. This one at Omaha Beach. Sean Ryan. This one in Utah. Peter Ryan. This man was killed last week in New Guinea. Daniel, Ryan. The three men of brothers, sir.

I've just learned that this afternoon their mother is getting all three telegrams. That's not all. There's a fourth brother, the youngest. He's somewhere in Normandy. We don't know where. And boys lie We're going to send somebody to find him And we're going to get him the hell

Out of there Some private in the 101st Lost three of his brothers And he's got a ticket home It's not going to be easy Find one particular soldier in the whole damn war If I know anything about Ryan It's just a name

But if finding him so he can go home If that earns me the right to get back to my wife Well then that's my mission Hello and welcome to Uncleared in Person Danger the podcast about the political and military thrillers in the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I write the Substack Newsletter on Popular Front. And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s,

now available in paperback, wherever good books are sold. And I'm working on another book, but we've talked about that already. And I'll talk about it in the future when I get close to finishing it. Yes. I'm excited about the second book. And so I should mention I'm working on a collection of essays. Oh, that's great. Wow.

Okay. That's the first time hearing about it. Terrific. It's been kind of like it. But it's like approaching the stage where it's going to become public. Okay. Great. That's what I'm working on.

So, you know, stay tuned for that whenever that happens. Excited for that. On this week's episode of the show, we watched. Stephen Spielberg's 1998, World War II picture, Saving Private Ryan, written by Robert Rodat, produced by Spielberg. And really, this is a very Spielberg-driven project, starring Tom Hanks, Ed Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Seismore, and a huge number of just guys you recognize. Ben Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Dennis Farina, Tenis, Dancin, Brian Cranston, Nathan Phillyan, Paul Giomati, Leland Orser, lots of people show up in this movie.

Score by John Williams, which probably one of Williams' best scores. And a huge hit of a movie. I mean, this is quite a significant film of the decade made for a budget of $65, $70 million, grossed nearly half a billion dollars. basically revived interest in World War II. I mean, we were at the, we were a little past the 50th anniversary of the major events, but this really supercharged interest in World War II and inspired a bunch more, many more films, video games,

books, the whole nine yards, the successful HBO series Banded Brothers is in a lot of ways a direct continuation of this film. I had Hanks and Spielberg's involved in there. This movie also extremely influential on film. The D-Day Landing and generally the portrayal of combat in this film was a real innovation. And you can see the influence of it everywhere post this film. So a very significant and influential film.

It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2014. And it's, I mean, I think it's fair to say it probably is, in this case, considered to be my mini, is one of the greatest war pictures ever made, a real triumph. And, you know, I've seen it a ton over the years, but this was, this most recent rewatch was the first one in about half a decade. And I will say, watching it this time, I was like, yeah, this movie, this movie is a triumph. I don't know how much plot synopsis is necessary, but we'll give you some. The film begins with the D-Day Landing. It begins, begins in the present or the present of the film where we meet an older man in his family who are traveling to a cemetery in France.

And the old man is looking at a grave and then we get a transition to the Normandy landing, June 6, 1944. This is, I mean, this is obviously the thing everything everyone remembers about the movie. It is an extended sequence. I didn't actually count how long it goes, but it's a long sequence. It seems like 25 minutes, right? Yeah. It's basically the first act of the movie. And it is, it's brutal.

I mean, it is actually really strikingly brutal and upsetting and disturbing with the depiction of mass death by a variety of means and the chaos of it all. So we meet during the landing. John H. Miller, a U.S. Captain and the Army, who is leading his troops ashore. They successfully accomplished their mission. And then we cut to somewhere, the United States Department of War, which receives communication as a writing letters, you know, sending their condolences to the families of soldiers killed. They realize that they have three letters going to one family, and it's three brothers who have been. and killed in action, the Ryan brothers. And the fourth brother is believed to still be alive.

James Francis Ryan of the 100th First Airboard Division. General George C. Marshall orders that Ryan be found and sent home. And Miller is tasked with doing this. The order comes down. Miller receives it, or sees it from Dennis Farina, and is tasked with recovering Ryan. And he assembles a group of soldiers to accompany him. Some of whom we've met, including Tom Seismore, is Mike Corvap, this sergeant and his deputy, but then others we have not, including Timothy Upham,

who is a interpreter who lacks combat experience. What follows is kind of a journey. It's a journey across France. The men encounter various obstacles, German troop encampments at these moments, they enter into combat. The soldiers in the group are killed. They grapple with the death, they grapple with the fact that their friends are being killed to find this one man. Eventually, while on the march, they encounter German patrol. The patrol is destroyed by a group of soldiers with the 100 first airborne, one of whom is Ryan. They meet at a nearby town. Miller wants to just get out of there with Ryan. Ryan insist on staying. And in any case, there are Germans approaching and they need to hold the bridge.

And so the final sequence of the film is this grueling battle over this town in which most of the group is killed trying to hold this bridge. Ryan is on the verge of being killed when American reinforcements come, stop the Germans. And this is basically when the movie ends. Miller tells Ryan to earn his survival. And we cut back to the cemetery where an elderly Ryan speaks to Miller and expresses his hope that he had lived the best life that he could.

I've obviously skipped a lot here important moments, including what I think is maybe one of the most disturbing deaths ever filmed on a Hollywood picture, which is when Adam Goldberg's character is killed and a very intimate struggle with the German soldier. but that's basically the movie. The tagging for the film was The Mission is a Man. And yeah, like I said, it was a second highest grossing film of 1998. It went on, the first was Armageddon, and the next after was Godzilla. It went on to win, what did it win at the Academy Awards? Okay, so at the Golden Globes, it won Best Drama and Best Directors.

for Spielberg, Hank is nominated for best actor, and Williams got nomination for best score. At the Academy Awards, it won best director for Spielberg, best cinematography for Kaminsky, best editing for Khan, best sound and best sound effects. Hanks was nominated for best actor. The screenplay was nominated and the music was nominated as a production design and makeup. Infamously, saving private Ryan lost best picture to Shakespeare in love. That movie sucked. Really one of the biggest upsets in the...

No one remembers that movie. No, no, it's trash. Yeah. And it's almost as crazy, if not crazier. The two that come to mind are... Crash. Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain and driving Miss Daisy winning over...

No, wait, was it the scent of a woman that beat out do the right thing or driving Miss Daisy? I think it was driving me. No, no, it wasn't. It was not driving Miss Daisy. That would have been too crazy. I do think it was sent of a woman. I think we're said of a woman.

I was going to say, if you were driving Ms. Spike was pissed off about driving Miss Daisy, separate incident. But let's see. Driving Miss Daisy winning over, if that had happened. No.

So crazy, it's actually kind of funny. Yeah. No, that was 1980. Well, I don't know, actually.

Okay, so, let's see, Oscar. Okay, that was 1980. 1990 and when was Do the Right Thing? That was earlier. Okay. Well, actually, might be the...

Because do the right thing and sent of a woman were both 92. Okay, okay, okay. All right. So, no. They were not into that competition. No, I think it was 1990. 89. 89. Okay, 1990 Academy Award. We got to look this up. I remember, I know that Spike Lee commented on driving Miss Davis. Okay. So I were, I was, I was. half right. So the issue is I did the right thing wasn't even nominated. Right. Okay. And driving Bist Dazey won best picture. And four Oscars or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

My left foot was also a considered to be with Daniel D. Lewis was considered to be overlooked. There are a lot of good movies that year. Henry the fifth great adaptation. I guess you can't give Shakespeare adaptation the best picture, but that was great. Glory was that year too. Yeah, glory was that year. Very good movie. Probably the best Civil War movie. be, honestly. Maybe right. Yeah. Well, anyway.

Anyway. Okay. So, saving five of Ryan was released from July 24th in 1998. Let's check up New York Times for that day. Except in domestic things, pretty quiet. We're in the post-historical 90s. And things are not as exciting as they are now.

History has ended in the last man has yet to rear his head. Right. And here, but there are still horrible things going on in the world. There's a fueled by drought and war. Starvation returns to Sudan. There's an article here about a famine in Sudan, which has been war torn for an extremely long time now. I think that they're having their third war in as many decades in Sudan.

Then Clinton's spokesman to leave. This is in the middle of the Lewinsky investigation, but it's really not. None of it is on the first page except for this. Michael D. Curry, who was using agile wit and aggressive tactics to remote the administration, and defended from scandal resign as press secretary this fall. President Clinton said secretary. And push for Puerto Rico vote, conservative been stressed. The Democratic governor of Puerto Rico, pushing for a chance for his island to vote for statehood,

has come up with a tempting sales pitch for the Republican-controlled Congress. And the adjutant place, governed Pedro Rossello and his lobbyists say that opposed his abortion, Hands out vouchers so children can't have pro-prol school schools and has sliced capital Dane's taxes, allow school pupils five minutes per prayer, and is busy privatizing many of its major industries. The place they had is hoping to clinch the deal is Puerto Rico. Listen, they could re-enslave people in Puerto Rico, and if it produced two Democratic senators, Republicans would not go for it. There is no amount of policy choices that that.

That could, that could, that's not what they care about in that case. They don't want two Democratic senators. So, I just don't, I don't think Puerto Rico, you think Puerto Rico state could's ever going to come up again in our lifetime? I think so. Yeah. I think so. I mean, it's just, it's an untenable situation.

Yeah. I think it will. They don't have to pay as many taxes. It's not, but they also don't get representation. They don't get representation. They don't get much in the way of, like, direct investment. True. I don't know. It just seems like the benefits outweigh, I don't know, I guess at some point that may not be true. But they've voted down, it voted down a couple times, I think now. Yeah. And independence is a total non-starter. I mean, I think if you, if there was sort of like, okay, we're going to have one last referendum. This one is sort of binding. I think that would maybe settle it. But I don't know.

Well, there's an article. I mean, I'm not going to read it, but I'm just flipping through the paper. There's an article about. Israel cites its warnings on Iran, but sees no missile pair now about Israel and Iran crashing over long distance and medium range missiles. Never heard about it. That never came to anything. Yeah, there's more about Sudan, which is very upsetting. That's pretty much it for this one. Anything else look interesting to you? I was amused by this headline top Republicans in Senate reject big tax cut push.

Unlikely to win it up votes. Leaders are a lot to risk fight with Democrats. I mean, this is just an artifact of the fact that there were still some, a handful of moderate Republicans in the Senate. Yeah, now the most Republican, who's the most moderate Republican in the Senate now? Susan Collins. Susan Collins, who she's probably going to stick around. She's undistroiable Susan Collins. Yeah.

He just got endorsed by Joe Manchin, that piece of shit. Oh. Well, she's like in, Troy Stevens is like in striking distance, but he's kind of fading. Yeah, it's basically a toss-up. If you average all the polling, what you have is like a toss-up. Yeah, but he should be doing better in this cycle, man. I don't know. Susan Collins.

She's very interesting. She won by eight points in 2008. Like, she has like this unshakable brand of being sort of like a sensible. moderate. It doesn't matter what she does. It's actually kind of striking. Yeah. But we'll see.

Anyway, we'll save that for the politics podcast. If you sign it for a Patreon, we have a politics podcast. Nothing else. So let's move to the movie. John, you've seen saving Private Ryan before. Many, many times. Many, many times. I watched it. Even before I knew we were doing it, I watched

it recently. I was doing like a kind of World War II. Well, as listeners know, I'm obsessed with World War II. like a lot of other people. But I went through a little phase of watching World War II movies. I watched this one. I watched a bridge too far. I watched a few old British ones, which I really enjoy.

I think it's had to do with D-Day anniversary coming up. So it was just interesting. You know, I have to say the movie holds up for the most part. I do think that there are things about it that have aged, but they have aged in an interesting way. The, in a way that I,

you know, I know we've done this many times where we kind of like call the high water. We like use a movie to like call the high water mark of like post history America or like 90 security America post post post-Cold War America. This is one of them. I know we've called the high watermark on other movies, but in terms of like the country kind of. reclaiming its history, feeling good about itself in a way that is not like raw, raw,

Rambo 80s, first blood. Not, I mean, Rambo, not first blood. So it's a different kind of patriotism. It's a liberal patriotism, frankly, which is reflective and melancholy and, you know, has complicated, supposedly complicated emotions attached to it. is not the kind of self-hatred or self-loathing and self-pity. In some cases, at the Vietnam movies, it was definitely kind of moving on from that. It has, you know, some of Stevens Spielberg's sentimental temperament is contained therein.

I mean, the one thing you have to say about the movie, and I don't think it's insignificant, I don't think it makes you stupid to appreciate this, is just like, the battle scenes, the tactical representations of combat in this movie are still really great. And like, it did set a standard. And, you know, sometimes do I turn it on just to watch the fighting? Kind of, you know, I know that's like that's a little childish. But like I think that the, okay, the scene with in the beginning is harrowing and terrible. And everyone was shocked at the time.

And, you know, there was kind of a debate of whether it went too far. It was good to represent war in that realist. or if it was desensitizing. But I would say the last battle of the movie is very exciting and fun might be a little callous. But it is a gripping piece of war cinema that really like I think every film after it has kind of tried to meet that standard. Now, with that being said, it fails like the Truffaut test, which is that it does somewhat, and it's meant to, even with the humanity and the showing the suffering of the war, you got to frankly say this glorifies world. Two. And do I think it shouldn't? I don't know. The thing is, it's like, I'm such a product of this time. My grandfather was in World War II. I looked up to him a great deal. I looked up to, I was obsessed with World War II as a kid. I grew up with all this mythology about it. This movie came out when I was young. So this triggers in me a real sense of a world that I miss.

and where things seemed more settled. Now, of course, I was a child, but the questions about fascism, the questions about the U.S.'s role in the war, about what we accomplished in the 20th century, those questions seemed a little more settled. And when I watched this movie, I kind of get back into that space and I miss it.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Yeah. So, as I mentioned, this is the first time I watched this in about five years. And one thing I was struck by, maybe this is part of my ongoing, like, re-evaluation of Spielberg. We haven't covered it in the podcast, but maybe last year I rewatched the War of the Worlds, which is, I think, a divisive movie. But the thing I was struck by on that watch is there are sequences that are like,

not just like terrifying, but like genuinely, like quite disturbing. Like in a, in a horror, almost in a horror sense, but like Spielberg, Spielberg is like capturing something quite haunting and disturbing at points in that movie. And, and when I watched this, this time, I was struck by the stylistic tension within it, which is that you get these moments of like Spielbergian Americana, right? The swelling John Williams score, the route, like, it's sunny, it's a field, you know, they're, they're joking or they're kind of, I mean, it is like greatest generation propaganda. Yeah, yeah. But then they're on, they're intercut with the war sequences,

which are like Italian neorealism, right? They're these, they're these, like the, the environments, it's almost that the color cast becomes colder. The environment are stark, bombed out. It's, you know, in one of the sequences, it's raining. And the camera never shies away from the impact of the violence. Like, you see a lot in this. this movie, what it actually looks like when a bullet hits him in.

Yeah. There's a scene where they stop the Panzer and the GIs hop on it. They throw their grenades in. And then some German soldiers come in with the automatic weapon shooting 20 caliber rounds, which are huge, like, you know, this big. And you see, like, the German soldiers are firing at the group of Americans. And Spielberg does not cut. There is not a cut away from the impact.

You see the bullets rip these guys apart. you know, you see one guy get decapitated by one of the rounds. Like, it's really disturbing. The D-Day sequence, you know, from the jump, you know, they land. And the camera plays a bit of a trick on you, right? Like you think you're with Tom Hanks' men, but you're actually with another group of men when they land. And you see the opening, you know, wave of bullets. And everyone on that transport is killed.

by machine gun fire. You see men drown. You see them, you know, get blown into pieces by artillery. One kind of funny sequence is a guy. He is a, I guess a combat medic. A bullet hits his helmet, bounces off. He takes off with helmet and wonder. And then another bullet, like, gets him clean in the skull.

There's around that same time, Hanks' character is trying to grab a radio guy. He grabs him, rolls him over. His face has been blown in. I mean, like, all this stuff. It's really grim. It's extremely grim. And I, what's, I mean, what's interesting is like, is that these, the movie is these two things. It is simultaneously, you know, this was the greatest generation.

I suppose also look, this is what they endured. But the interesting thing about that is that they aren't, they aren't necessarily heroic in like a Hollywood sense, if that makes neat. If that, if that, if that jives with your reading, they, Tom Hanks's character is like more, like, not only witnesses men execute prisoners has no particular problem with it. Right. Right. Yeah, they show that. They show American soldiers committing war crimes several times, which is not something that you would have seen in any old 60s, 50s, World War II movie for the most. Like, no one's ennobled by any of this.

It's actually, they're all like broken. by it and scarred by it and left, you know, left sort of like in this sort of existential, like what does any of this mean? Like, you know, we can say this was a war that needed fighting. This was a cause that needed to be won. But for the people in the, in the midst of it, it really was just absolute hell with the occasional respite. And I think I don't know if it, I think it's right that it fails a true foe test, but I do think it's somewhat subversive in that the, the fact that it's Spielberg, the fact that there are these moments of Spielberg, Spielberg in Americana, they set up the fact that this is an absolutely brutal film and one in which, and one in which you see kind of the full spectrum of humanity during, war. And there's like no judgment necessarily from the camera. Like everyone hates the upham character because he, you know, is paralyzed with fear during that last combat sequence. But like it's the

the camera doesn't view him with any contempt. And in fact, the camera is showing like one of the, one of the last shots we see of Ryan before reinforcements come is Ryan terrified crying. Right. Like the cameras very much throughout, you know, this was a perfectly natural reaction to what was being experienced. And if anything, it was the people who were able to keep their wits about them, who are the ones who are unusual. That's, I think, I mean, the Hank's character, Hank's character to me is, he's like the exceptional one, right? Like, he's this, in the movie suggests that the men around him know this, see him as someone who's like,

that's why they're so curious about his background. Because he's an excellent soldier. Who is this guy who is able to not lose his mind in the midst of all of this? So I don't know. Those were my thoughts for watching it this time. Just sort of like this is a, this is,

I think this is a movie is Spielberg doing two things simultaneously, which is like producing something that is for him, like very much honoring his father, who was a veteran, very much kind of speaking to his own interest and honoring the people in his life, but is doing so by basically saying, no, this was not a grand, glorious, heroic fight. This was war. And, you know, war is, war as hell. Yeah.

I guess, I guess maybe that effect was, maybe it's, capacity to shock has faded a little bit. But you haven't seen it also as recently as I have. So that might also have something to do with it. So some of those images might have just been more striking. I might have been more desensitized to it because I've seen it a couple times since. I think the secret, okay, like just to go to some of the particulars of the film, like, all right. You know, it does do some things, some genre conventions.

Like it has like the kind of like platoon movie convention of guys from different parts of United States. We got one guy from Brooklyn. Yeah, exactly. This guy's Italian. This guy's Jewish, you know, like, so they. This guy might be a Klansman. It's not clear. Right.

We don't know what's going on with this guy. So, and then, you know, and that's a convention of the genre. It's a little hackneyed, but you kind of expect it and kind of enjoy it for its own right. Then, yeah, you got like the, you know, the guy who you expect. Like, I think, okay, where I would say, I cannot totally agree with you, subversive, but I would say where it flaunts expectations is that in a conventional film about war, the little cowardly guy would actually find his bravery at some time in the movie, and he doesn't. You know, like, he would come, he would like, he would rise the occasion, and he really just never does.

And I think that that's, you know, part of the realism of the film and part of like, you know, what makes that character actually kind of striking. And then you wonder, but then, you know, I was watching it this last time and I was wondering about his, you know, he convinces him not to commit a war. war crime to execute this German soldiers they capture during this mission to take out of machine gun nest. And, you know, he convinces him, convinces the captain not to shoot the prisoner to not commit a war crime, to let him go off.

And then he rejoins this other unit, which the other guy said it would happen. Now, the movie makes you wonder if his adherence to morality or the rules of war in that moment it's just continuous with his cowardice. Like, does he not want to shoot the guy because he's a coward? Or does he not want to shoot the guy because he feels a principled reason that you should not treat prisoners that way? It's unclear. And at the end, he eventually, when that guy surrenders again, this time he shoots him. He shoots him dead.

And that is horrible because now the guy is literally no longer a threat. You know, he's put his, he kills, he eventually, he himself ends up committing. the war crime, which is to kill a prisoner. That guy, the soldier, did nothing wrong. He, well, he didn't keep his oath to this, but he's just, I mean, from the, from the point of view of the rules of war, you have a duty to escape as a soldier. So if he's a POW, you should find your own unit. And then he was just fighting against the army that he was sent to fight against. So, like, I don't know. And I had a weird reaction to that scene where, and I think that you're as an audience, you're supposed to be like, oh yeah, finally he got he got the guts to kill a guy.

But I was like, well, he, the only guy he killed, he didn't save his friend who saved him and was a tough soldier. The only guy he kills is the guy, you know, who is unarmed. The only person he's able to kill in the movie's unarmed. And then like the vibe is like, good. Yeah, he did it. You know, like, so I was just, I was taken aback by that. And I think when I was younger, I watched it.

I was like, yeah, I kill that guy. But now I'm like, that was a prisoner of war. the first time around, it was more justifiable because they were like, we don't know if we can, like, this guy is impossible to safely transport and he's a danger. I mean, it's still a war crime, but it's more justifiable. And the second time, he just shoots him out of revenge in a way. Yeah, but that guy, that scene of the knife fight is really brutal, obviously. It is a, yeah, that's one of the most disturbing fights in all movies and kill. feelings in all movies, it's very hard to watch.

But yeah, I mean, I think that basically, I wonder, like, this movie, I think is not, at one time, it would have been like a consensus, liberals and conservatives, both like this movie. Now, I think it's moving into Libland, you know? Like, I think this is very blue America kind of. I don't know. Maybe it's still mass culture enough to include both. Maybe World War II is still a neutral ground. But and I have to say, this is neither here nor there because we're supposed to be discussing the movies. But I do think in a lot of ways, Band of Brothers is better. The show that comes after this is sort of more sophisticated in its take on war and does less of the corny stuff. It does some of it. I'm not going to say it does not a bit. But is a more moving story. And I've rewatched that many, many times. And I've enjoyed it and found it to be a lot more meaningful and interesting than saving Private Ryan.

But I think they were sort of perfecting the way of making a movie in the modern context about the war. But that's really excellent. And then it kind of degrades because then the Pacific one is not so good. But then that goes back into the Pacific theater. You have to deal with a lot more because of the brutality of the combat, the racialization of the combat. You have to deal with a lot more problematic elements.

and that becomes less raw, raw and heartwarming. It's kind of going back into Vietnam territory. And then the Air War one, I just thought it was back. I was disappointed. I've not, you know, I've not seen, I think I've only seen a bit of Band of Brothers. I probably should watch the whole thing. Oh, you love it. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah. Try to, it's an interesting question. Does this movie, is this like a lib movie now? Or Eric Campbell, the Bulls and Conservatives both, both embrace him. And some of that is a question of how, like, what is the, like, how do the respective sides view the Second World War? To the extent that this movie embodies the American post-war consensus, that this was a necessary war A, that the U.S. that what was meaningful and important about the U.S. armed forces, that they were a truly democratic army, right? like people coming from all walks of life, people coming from different ethnic backgrounds. Obviously, in the film, the film does not show any black soldiers and black soldiers.

Generally, we're not given combat duty. But it is the case that, you know, for the D-Day operation, the soldier, many of the soldiers responsible for supply, for support were African-American soldiers. They took part in the film. They're not portrayed, but they were there. And that's where, that's where, you know, I'd be interested to see how the right thinks of this or the, or the hard right these days. Because you could imagine one of those people looking at a movie like this and saying, yes, white people saved Europe. White people saved democracy. Now, that's like kind of anachronistic because, you know, a Jewish American and Italian American, they weren't, they were seen as white, but they weren't seen as like white, you know?

Right, right. I think people can sometimes overindex the kind of, you know, not every white person is seeing as white, but like, you know, Italian Americans are understood to be European. They were just understood to be sort of like, you know, swarthy and not quite, not quite, you know, white like a German or white like an English person. And so you can, you can imagine a right wing, ethno-nationalist type. watching this movie and saying, you know, two honorable armies of white people going at each other. Right.

Yeah, that's the thing. The clean, yeah, well, the Germans are not shown. Well, they're shown pretty, they're pretty awful. But do they, I don't think the Germans commit any atrocities on screen. I don't think the German army is portrayed as being any more brutal. I mean, I think, I think that stuff is left in the background. Like, obviously it's there. The Goldberg character, Adam Goldberg's character in particular, is there to remind you of what is happening in the background here.

But I think that the text of the film does not portray the Germans as especially brutal and grotesque. Yeah. I mean, they do engage, the unit they fight the end, I think is an SS. Yeah, it is an SS union. Yeah. Yeah, which was just historically accurate that there were a lot of SS Panzer Divisions in that area or Panzer Grenadier divisions. So, I mean, also, let's just talk about the premise of the movie for a moment.

I mean, like, it is, is it believe, does it matter? Is it believable? Would they send these guys a squad of eight people out normally to find this guy? This is, no. I don't know. This is believable to be. Because maybe. The war would probably, they would make an effort.

The movie itself is based off. of like a real like it was the case that there were families where multiple sons were killed in the in the war and it actually it is believable to me that up the chain of command someone would say I wish if we can maybe they wouldn't maybe it wouldn't be this kind of like assemble your best men kind of deal but it would be more of like if you find this guy he's got to go home and then I guess what I what the movie does that's interesting is, you know, it doesn't provide, it does have that in the background, as you said, but it doesn't provide so much of an ideological justification for the war as a fight for freedom

as it's a fight for this guy. It's a fight for this American. And they're all fighting for each other. They are a brand of brothers. They're, you know, this is what that errors talk about that there's a sense that, you know, you're just fighting for each other at some point. So it kind of personalizes the struggle of the war, too, as being. And then, you know, he gives the speech.

He's like, well, every character struggling with the war as a meaningful endeavor, right? It's like, what does it mean? Are they having an existential crisis about it? They get cynical. They don't want to continue with it. You know, everyone wants to abandon the mission. They think it's a ridiculous mission. It is from certain to certain extent.

But then he gives a speech where he said, well, maybe saving this guy would be the best thing that could come out of the war, which is interesting. Because, I mean, like, from a certain perspective, beating the Nazis is the best. thing that come out of the war. I mean, you're, you know, like saving the world from, from evil. But they, I think it's difficult or the way it communicates the audience is like, well, this has to be the, you know, it has to be personalized. It has to be the face of somebody. And it has to be this kind of almost quixotic struggle to defend, to protect this one guy. and to, you know, save his family from more grief. It's a, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

three musketeers ethic. But, you know, the other thing is, is what, what I, what I, yeah, okay, I, I, I hear you about, um, the military might make some efforts, but then you have to also consider that in World War II things that the military did like, for instance, um, if you fell off a boat and you were in a convoy, sorry, they're not stopping. Yeah. You're gonna drown. And like, you're just one guy of many. Or, you know, like, that's, that kind of thing happened all the time.

And then, like, in the invasion of Sicily, troops were ordered in order to stay the gliders crashed into the sea with airborne gliders. SAS troops landing on the beach were ordered not. They could not stop their transports to save drowning soldiers. Like, so there was a lot of intentional, you know, sacrifice. or clear sacrifice of people who could be saved, you know, potentially, but it would screw up, you know, the way that the war was fought, which was on a mass scale. And they had schedules. It was a very, you know, I would say that one thing I'm missing in a World War II movie, maybe, I don't know, Oppenheimer kind of gets to this in a certain way is the industrial quality of it, right?

like how the U.S. military industrialized and how it was part of this big machine that kind of rolled along and how like, yeah, you know, if you got run over, if you, you know, that, sorry, pal, like, we're going to keep moving, you know. So I do think that there's that certain, the movie does not capture the indifference. And this is even more clear on the eastern front. The indifference to mass death also where an individual really mattered very little. I guess that sort of provides the dramatic tension of the movie. Like, why should this one guy matter? But I do think it's slightly unbelievable in that respect,

considering how many people they were just like, yeah, we're going to lose this many guys. And that's just too bad. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't disagree with that. I think that, I mean, I think the, in terms of just like story purpose of focusing on one guy,

it makes sense from that. But I think it makes sense from the perspective of for like the soul. soldiers themselves, this wasn't necessarily like an ideological crusade, right? Like for the soldiers themselves, this was about the people around making it through, getting through, getting through the experience and getting out alive. And focusing on a single person, I think, but helps dramatize that dynamic. It's interesting to think of what a World War II movie that did emphasize the productive aspect of it would look like because, you know, that that is, I mean, that really is, it's the story of the war,

the story of the ability of the United States in particular to just like churn out men and material on an unbelievable scale. And I say the U.S. in particular because, you know, the Soviet Union depended on the U.S. for much of its material. The Red Army would not have been able to sustain itself without, you know, the Red Army. American aid. Nerds will argue about the relative capacities of, you know, German tank versus American tanks.

Oh, you want to have this conversation? I'd love to have this conversation. But I think the relevant thing is that German tanks may have well been superior mechanical objects, but they also required a ton of maintenance. And we're as close to bespoke as you can get a tank, whereas American tanks were just slapped together and could be parts were easily replaceable and plentiful. So at the end of the day, your German tank breaks down and you're kind of screwed. American tank breaks down.

You just get another tank. Yeah. And the U.S. applied that mass production approach to everything and it really worked. They were building more ships than U-boats could sink fast. They were building ships faster than U-boats could sink them. It was never like it was never a possibility. I mean, this is sort of a myth of the war that like, oh, the U-boats could have strangled Britain and stopped the trade. No, there was no way.

There was no, not enough for them to sink the amount of ships. Once the United States comes into the war, especially, like we were building, we built 8,000 Liberty ships. It's not a small ship. Like they mass produced, not just cars, not just tanks. We're talking about, you know, ships of many thousands of tons. So, you know, it is strange also. So, and I mean, just to reflect as kind of the place we are now as a country, I mean, there's a great deal of nostalgia for America as being that productive. But it's strange because, you know, we do look back on that as a as a sign when like the strength of America was shown.

And, you know, we don't have that productive capacity as we used to. You think like, oh, well, you know, we've just advanced. But we've also lost. Like, and I'm not saying that it's not nicer to probably have a service job. I'm sure working in a tank factory was not that much fun. But the United States does not, cannot easily return to the productive capacity that it had during the Second World War overnight. We have literally lost industrial know-how and capacity that is very difficult to bring back. So it was a really different country and a really different world.

And, you know, it's sort of, it's sad that we, it's horrible that we produced so well for wars. It would be, you know, but you know, America's also been extremely productive in peacetime. So after the war, so, you know, I think that it, it just shows some things that I still kind of feel proud of the country. I'm like, yeah, America, we built things. You know, we build things so wet. We built a million things really pretty well. Like, they're not perfect, but they were like pretty good. And that's what America used to be good at.

We're like, yeah, we build like pretty good stuff. It's pretty cheap and pretty quickly. And it's pretty rugged. And now what can you even say? We used to build things, Jamal. I mean, you know, I think we've had this conversation before. I think I think the extent to which we ought to be building stuff is like a little overstated.

But I do think that for national security purposes, it would be good to be able to return some of that productive capacity. You know, we're kind of experiencing that right now with the Iran War where we basically cannot replenish munitions fast enough and have depleted, you know, critical munition stores. And the U.S. just does not have the capacity to replenish them on like a rapid schedule. That's probably bad. I think we should be able to replenish our munitions, you know, build. you know, build military aircraft, like kind of supply our military domestically on a relatively, you know, quick schedule. Probably unpopular opinion on the left, but if I were advising a Democratic candidate for

president, I would say like making it a priority to expand the military's productive capacity is actually, it's actually worth doing. but that's a separate conversation. Saving Private Ryan, I mentioned its legacy as a film, but it has a long legacy. I mean, it genuinely is a very influential movie. And that's mostly for its depiction of combat.

You know, if you watch, you do watch previous World War II movies, certainly once from the 50s and 60s, but just war movies in general. This isn't a particularly good. movie, but a couple months ago I watched the Clint Eastwood film Heartbreak Ridge,

which is about like a small marine unit basically. And it's, it's fine. Or something more, you know, a Vietnam War movie like casualties of war, which is Brian De Palma. They're still Hollywood. They're so glossy.

And the extent of it Spielberg seemed to have made a real effort to not have it be glossy, to have it be like chaotic. like influences war pictures to the to this day. The recent Alex Garland film Warfare is very much like a spiritual descendant of, it's fine. Of the combat sequences from saving private Ryan.

Basically the big difference is that Spielberg is a master of the camera, like knows how to move and place a camera like no one else. And so his sequences are incredibly easy to follow. I mean, you mentioned the final combat sequence. What's so I think incredible about that is that at no point do you not know where everyone is. You know where every single member of the squad is throughout that entire sequence. You know where they are in relation to the Germans. Like the geography of the sequence is impeccable.

And that's like a real, that's a real triumph of filmmaking, that you can have something that is chaotic. And yet, at no point do you not know where everyone is and where everyone is moving in their relationship, their spatial relationship to each other. And that's, that's a thing that like, you know, a lot of filmmakers, most filmmakers struggle with. And when it comes to sort of like your typical action picture of any kind, it's very hard to do. So I think that both the D-Day sequence, like all the kind of bad sequences really stand out even today compared to basically everything else. Any other thoughts on saving private Ryan? No, I mean, it's obviously worth seeing to you personally. I really highly recommend Bannon Brothers.

I think you'd enjoy it a lot and to the listeners as well. It's good. And I think in some ways superior product. It's great. I mean, it's one of the best for over two movies. you got to say. It is got harrowing and incredible battle scenes. It's pretty compelling.

Pretty good acting. Script, you know, got his hokeyness, but not terrible. And yeah, it's just like one of those movies you kind of got to see. Yeah, I think I will check out Bandit Brothers. I'm currently, this is really in the weeds, but I'm currently watching this very long anime series, which I think you would like. actually. It's called... I don't know about that.

You've said that before. All right. What is called? Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It basically should have war and peace in space. That's what it is. It has lots of like high level conversations about sort of like the nature of like democracy and autocracies and stuff

and then like space battles. But why not just read war and peace? Because I want to watch it in space, John. That's why. All right. All right. Fine. All right. All right. I've heard. heard worse pitches. Yeah. Anyway, all right, that's it for our saving friend of Ryan episode.

I will obviously recommend it. It really is. It's one of those movies that is canonical these days. And like all canonical films, easy to forget that it actually is as good as people say. I would even say it's almost underrated in how good it is as a film. And there's not a bad performance in the movie. Even Vin Diesel, who plays a, has a minor character, minor part in the film, really is, like, giving a performance. I mean, I think the whole thing is, it's a real triumph.

So I would, I would strongly recommend if you've not seen saving five of rhyme before, check it out. If you have seen it, it's worth revisiting. I watched, I have my 4K next to me right here, I watched the 4K edition and this very lovely steel book. And it looks great. It sounds great, too. Couldn't watch it too loudly because it's very loud in my kids' ber asleep. But the sound design is quite good. All right.

That is it for the show. Thank you as always for watching or for listening, however you encounter this. You can find this wherever podcasts are found. And if that place allows you to leave a rating in a review, please do so to help other people find us. And let us know that this is a show that they might consider listening. to you can reach us for feedback at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have a bunch of stuff about the X-Files movie.

And so I'm going to read a comment, email from Tom, who writes, hi, John and Jamel, and the email is just titled X-Files Fight the Future, our X-Files episode the one day before this. As a Gen X-Exter who grew up with a lot of nerdy interest, I found your episode on X-Files Fight the Future. Interesting. Your point about the overload of series load in the lore in the film is well taken,

but I think it's also an important context shift that's affected the longevity of the movie. In 97, the X-Files was clearly fiction. When he told someone at work about black helicopters in FEMA camps that Fox Mulder had uncovered in the latest episode, everyone knew you were talking about a fantastical TV show. No one thought you really believed it.

The show was a detached and largely harmless way to reframe obscure conspiracy theories. Fast forward five years and people like Alex Jones sort of presenting these conspiracy theories from a place of authoritative truth. There's no nod or wink. Info wars just letting you in on the quote real secrets that they quote globalists are hiding from you. And if you are not a true believer, Jones should either talk over you or hang up on your call. The X-Files was a novel way to play a sprawling game of connected dots. But it was never actively gaslighting you, indoctruding you, or deliberately persecuting minorities in our groups like Jones and so many

modern right-wing influences do today. In my opinion, the original change, that cultural change, is the big factor that is undeservedly selling some of the X-Files' original charm. Thanks again for another engaging episode, even if John was angry for most of it. Best. Thank you, Tom, for the email.

Okay, look, I'm not trying to say that the X-Files did anything wrong. I'm just saying it didn't age particularly well because of the things you're talking about. And I would argue that some of those things were always seeping into the... Like Alex Jones was not the beginning of it. There was already hardcore, you know, militia culture stuff

that was playing on conspiracies. It goes back way farther than that. So, yeah, I know what you mean, but it's a little bit more coming. Yeah, I would say that the extent to which conspiracy thinking has moved into the center of mainstream politics, yeah, it does make a thing like the X-Files less enjoyable. I mean, for me, it makes any kind of vague, conspiratorial thing, just like less, you know, less, I'm less inclined to want to tolerate it.

Because the thing about conspiratorial thinking is it does begin to infect everything when people start adopting it. And so I, to me, it's like disappointing that a thing like The X-Files has run into this, like, particular cultural context. But it is, that is how it is. You know, a lot of people are peasant brain these days. And that's just, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just how things are.

Apologies if you are a peasant listening to this. Yes, we have nothing against peasants. We know you perform an important function in society. All right. Thank you, Tom, for the email. And again, if you want to reach it for feedback, you can email us at Unclear and Present. Feedback at fastmail.com. I don't know why I kept forgetting that.

Episodes come out roughly every other week. And so for our next episode, we were recovering. Let me check out the list. We are covering. Oh, we're returning to a film. We did a live episode on this years ago. We're watching Ronan. Oh, hell yeah.

That's exciting. That movie rocks. John Frankenheimer's 1998 espionage thriller Such a great film Yeah One of Frankenheimer's

Last Pictures and a great great movie starring Robert De Niro John Rineau Natasha McEllone McEllony Stellin Scarsguard

Jonathan Price Sean Bean Michael Lonsdale Just a murderer's row of great actors Yeah Great movie One of the great Chase sequence

One of truly the best chase sequences ever filmed. Yeah. Best cars chase ever. Yeah. Ronin, very excited about it. Very brief, flat synopsis, a briefcase with undisclosed content, sought by Irish terrorists and

the Russian mob mixed with the criminal's hands. An Irish license assembles a squad of mercenaries are Ronan and gives them the thorny task of recovering the case. So that will be in two weeks. Over at the Patreon episode on Talk Radio, the Alperstone film, and then we're going to do an episode on The Order, a film about the white supremacist group that terrorized the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s, and we're joined them back to back because talk radio is based somewhat off the life of Alan Burrick,

who is murdered, assassinated by members of the order. There is the connection. And this isn't for the podcast, but I will be watching ahead of Ronan, since I am a Frankenheimer completionist. I picked up a copy of John Frankenheimer's three-hour miniseries for T&T on George Wallace that is not available for streaming. We have to buy a DVD off of eBay. But I'm going to watch that. So if you follow my letterbox, at some point I'll be posting a review of that.

Of that, I'm very interested to watch it. And I'm going to just say, people should watch more John Frankenheimer. one of our great action directors who has had had a long career and a lot of just stone cold classics among them, the Manchurian candidate, the train seconds, seven days in May. And an HBO movie about the Attica Riot

against the wall, which is very good. It stars Kyle McLaughlin, Samuel Jackson, and Clarence Williams III. That's actually a great movie, and I recommend it. Okay, that is the show. Thank you for listening. For John Gans, I'm Jamal Bury. This unclear and present danger,

and we'll see you next time.