Spielberg, as you've surely realized by now, went all-out to make 'Saving Private Ryan' as great as it could possibly be. We've already talked about how he washed out the color palette to make everything seem grim. He went just as far with the sound. War is a loud, disorientating and terrifying landscape, and the director wanted that to come across to the audience. A huge amount of time was spent on getting the sounds of war just right.
Because of that, Spielberg required every movie theater who screened the film to agree that they'd show it at maximum volume. Every shot, every explosion and every airplane screaming overhead had to be heard just as it would have been heard by the soldiers on the ground, thus immersing the audience in the movie. That's great for the audience watching the film; not so great for the audience watching a kid's movie in the next room!