Blu-ray of the Day: Saving Private Ryan

Cast: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Paul Giamatti, Vin Diesel, Ted Danson.
Director: Steven Spielberg.
Screenplay: Robert Rodat.
Score: John Williams.
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski.

To paraphrase a line from the highly decorated, 1998 D-Day dramatisation, this Ryan upgrade is worth it, with an HD transfer as jaw-dropping as the combat sequences that open and close the three-hour tour-de-force. The Band of Brothers scenario sounds routine — D-Day grunts risk their lives on an impossible mission so a mama’s boy doesn’t lose his — but is packed with surprising twists on genre conventions and an action-charged narrative that leaves you shattered. A masterpiece of cinema that eloquently articulates the brutality and brotherhood of war, it horrifies and deeply touches the soul with its fury, poetry and grueling realism. The standard definition extras are the same as those on an earlier special edition DVD, the highlight being Shooting War, a 2000 documentary about the filming of war that military historian Stephen E Ambrose presents and Tom Hanks narrates.

Movie: 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
Image: 😀 😀 😀 😀 😐
Extras: 😀 😀 😀 😀