American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"Saving Private Ryan" 1998)

Captain John Miller: Address to Unit on Mission to Save Private Ryan

Audio mp3 delivered by Tom Hanks

Private Reiben: Well put your money where your mouth is and do it! Do it! Pull the trigger already!

Sergeant Horvath: You don't know when to shut up. You don't know how to shut up.

Corporal Upham: Captain, please!

Captain Miller: Mike? What's the pool on me up to right now? What's it up to? What is it three hundred dollars -- is that it? Three hundred? I'm a school teacher. I teach English Composition in this little town called Addley, Pennsylvania. The last eleven years, I've been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was coach of the baseball team in the spring time.

  Sergeant Horvath: I'll be doggone.

Captain Miller: Back home when I tell people what I do for a living, they think, well, that, that figures. But over here its a big, a big mystery. So I guess I've changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much my wife is even gonna to recognize me whenever it is I get back to her -- and how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today.

Ryan -- I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care. Man means nothin' to me. It's just a name. But if -- you know -- if going to Ramel and finding him so he can go home, if that earns me the right to get back to my wife -- well, then, then that's my mission.

You wanna leave? You wanna go off and fight the war? Alright. Alright, I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.

Special mp3: Tom Hanks Audio Narrative - National WWII Memorial Dedication