The movie Saving Private Ryan was directed by Steven Spielberg is a classic and is loved by many people throughout the US.  A movie just released called Hacksaw Ridge directed by Mel Gibson is following quite close in the footsteps of Saving Private Ryan in terms of how good these two movies are.  This movie is on the way to becoming a classic just like Saving Private Ryan has become one.  These two movies are extremely comparable considering they are both set in WWII and they include gut wrenching battle scenes and deeply emotional scenes of brotherhood and bonding between the men included in these war companies and regiments.  At the same time these stories couldn’t be more different in terms of plot and the overall strenuous goal that these two movies push for.

Saving Private Ryan opens with an extremely intense war battle on D-Day as the troops storm the beaches in Normandy France.  You don’t know any of the characters at this point; yet people are dying everywhere. One can not even be sure of who the protagonist is at the beginning of the movie, but it is soon easy to figure out because the camera seems to follow one captain of the company (Tom Hanks) and he survives the beach invasion as seemingly everyone around him is dying.  Hacksaw Ridge opens quite differently from this because we see the main character off the bat named Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) grow up in the mountains of Virginia and we get an idea of the girl he loves back home and the men that he meets in basic training before anyone is even killed yet in combat. That is the first major difference between the two is that one movie builds relationships before anyone dies and the other just kills hundreds of guys before we even get the benefit of learning anyone’s name.  The main characters have similarities and differences as well. In Saving Private Ryan the captain of the company carries many guns and weapons and he leads all the men throughout the movie, killing many enemies along the way. He is obviously smart and likes to be in charge. But in Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss is a pretty average kid and he believes strictly in the bible and he doesn’t want to take the life of any man, but his main purpose for enlisting in the army is to be a medic and save lives instead of taking them.  When Desmond first arrives to basic training, he outperforms everyone in the company in physical fitness but when the time comes for him to pick up a rifle he simply refuses. This refusal causes the company to have to do a lot of running and physically strenuous things due to Desmond’s bad cooperation with the fire arms. As a result of this the men in his company begin to beat him at night and they despise of him and call him a coward. But once they enter battle, Desmond is cleared to go into combat without a weapon and just his medical equipment and he ends up saving 75 men and wonders so far behind enemy lines to save these men that typical solders would never dare to do. After this courageous act, the men start to really look up to him and he is sort of represented as and undecorated and a “unspoken leader”. So now the characters from the two movies are really similar because the men look up to both of them and would do anything for them.

This Friendships developed over the course of these two movies are truly great. Yet the only issue with this is when someone dies, it is incredibly emotional because anyone can relate to these character so well and one can honestly feel for them. Although it is the same world war and time period, the location of the two character are completely different. For example, in Saving Private Ryan the characters are part of D-Day fighting the Germans and invading on the beaches under horrific fire power trying to infiltrate Normandy France. In Hacksaw Ridge the characters are over in the pacific fighting in the battle of Okinawa against the Japanese and trying to take over hacksaw ridge and that is their main objective. The difference is that the Japanese are crazy with the kamikazes and the suicide in order to kill more Americans.  The messed up thing about this is that the Japanese even knew for a fact that they would lose but they are so crazy that they just wanted to kill as many Americans as they could. 

The main characters are both really good people as far as morals and how they treat other people. In Saving Private Ryan the captain spares the life of a German who killed one of his men because it was the right thing to do.  All of the men in his company wanted to murder that guy because they were under the heat of passion, but the captain stuck to his values and didn’t let that happen because he is a good man. Also in Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond helped to save the life of a random Japanese soldier that he has never seen before. He gives and bandages and a shot of morphine because it was the right thing to do and Desmond follows the word of god. In WWII the troops where vary limited on supplies so many would think that he was crazy for wasting morphine on the enemy when some of his own men could use that medicine just as bad or even worse. That just shows what kind of characters’ theses two guys are.

These are great movies and they perfectly resemble and contrast each other. Many things are brought up throughout the story that are heart warming, but at the same time there are many scenes that can be heart breaking. These or most war fans favorite war movies and both of them were made instant classics. If you haven’t seen these then I recommend that you see them. Both are extremely good and can make someone proud to be an American.  They have extremely high ratings on IMDB and some people even say that Saving Private Ryan is “the best movie I have ever seen”.  As Caption Miller would say in Saving Private Ryan “that’ll be all private, we did it”. 
