MJB SCRIPT REVIEW | SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

Long car journey gave me the opportunity for this weeks classic script; SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Plot in a nutshell; WW2 D-Day landing. Captain Miller and a small band of assorted troops are tasked with going behind enemy lines and finding the last of four brothers, Ryan, and bringing him home alive. If he is still alive.

So, to the script. This here, is an opportunity. A proper, full blown, one-off chance to read something that has been imbued with that rarest of qualities; spirit. From the opening Omaha beach landing (so devastatingly handled by Spielberg in the film), via the cross country search for Ryan, to the finale at the bridge, this is a no-holds barred tour de force of composition, pacing, world building and character construction. Everything here is worded to perfection. Action directions. Dialogue. Action sequences. Take your pick. Stunning.

So what did I learn from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN?

Well, just like last weeks pick, Last of the Mohicans, I could wax lyrical on many aspects. But these three in particular stood out;

1) Research. Again, another world that feels full of detail. You can see the research and that every detail has been studied and used accordingly. This is what exceptional research looks like.

2) Action based AD’s; this is easily one of the most exhilarating, full-on action scripts I’ve ever read and runs with pace that keeps you on your toes. Every scene, even if it’s banter on a dirt track, holds a certain menace in the background. Something can go wrong, and when it does, boy does it still smack. Feel the pace you want in your script. If it’s action and you aren’t out of breath by the time your done writing that scene, may be it needs another draft.

3) Spirit; the characters feel real. But not just real. Real for that time. As if the writer had interviewed soldiers from that period and cast them in their script. When these characters speak, they feel both like someone you could know now, but be living in 1944. The accents are there. The ages are there. The history of each character is there. Spoken and unspoken. From now on, if I can and if it helps, I’m doing interviews as part of the research. Wow.

In conclusion; Just read it. Please. There is so much to learn here and such a wealth of character design. These are all classics I know, but there is a reason they are. And this script carry’s something really, really special. If it was a book, it would be Moby Dick. That’s how essential this is as a read for a screenwriter.

Link to the script;

https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Saving_Private_Ryan.pdf