Most Rewatchable Scene
The Armada's arrival; the leaflet opening
In the discussion (20)
Approx. transcript time · 00:25:38Read transcript
- The heavy cross-cutting makes the category a pickle; Hardy running out of fuel stretches across about 20 minutes in three sections, and one participant says the three of them can set the rules anew.
- A scene here is rarely two characters in a room; Nolan captures moments rather than scenes in a quiet movie that is also one of the loudest.
- The host offers four picks: the leaflets falling through to the beach and the mole credit, saving the shivering soldier, Commander Bolton seeing the armada, and Farrier setting his plane ablaze while being taken.
- Not knowing that a mole is a jetty, one participant first thought it meant a spy.
- The first 45 minutes are treated as a sequence running from the leaflets to the beach and the mole credit, followed by the air attack on the beach with perhaps the greatest shot in war-movie history. — Quentin Tarantino
- The lead (Tommy) is apparently never called by name in the film and meets no one who knows him.
- His silence is compared to Eastwood and Siegel's Frank Morris in Escape from Alcatraz rather than McQueen in Le Mans; the kid is not heroic, just trying to survive, and the opening scene has him trying to relieve himself. — Quentin Tarantino
- Nolan shoots practically when he can; the beach shot was probably staged with a series of closer explosions and a dummy touched up afterward; Saving Private Ryan's great shots are all in its opening section.
- Tommy's story is a series of jailbreaks that each land him in another prison, as when the boat goes down after the jam sandwich and tea.
- George running up to the boat is heartbreaking on rewatch because he is going to die.
- The film is both vast and enclosed: ocean and beach against cockpits, sinking ships and the narrow mole; the only solution was 800 boats from England.
- The first dogfight gives a primal playing-with-toys feeling, and its "I'm on him / he's on me" exchange is named as a personal best quote. — Chris Ryan
- The fire-on-the-water sequence with the men on the Moonstone and Hardy's point of view of the bomber while low on fuel is called unreal; the first dogfight ends when the flight commander's plane is nicked.
- Asked for more, the sinking of the ship is named. — Quentin Tarantino
- The sinking of the ship is called amazing, along with the shot of the torpedo seen coming toward the men like Jaws.
- Asked for a vote, one participant says for the emotion it has to be the British soldiers seeing the armada.
- Another voice agrees but would probably throw a vote to the stretcher run, where Zimmer's score truly kicks in; the men carry the stretcher for mercenary reasons, trying to get on the boat, and are booted off.
- Another goes with the leaflet scene as both peaceful and terrifying.
- One participant calls the opening his favorite scene but says the Armada is the emotional payoff; watching it in London, all the Brits were crying.
- Branagh is cast for that payoff; old men in small boats coming to take their boys home feels perfectly British, as does the blind man handing out blankets.