'Saving Private Ryan' is quite a long film. The final edit is 169 minutes long, which gives it a running time of over two and a half hours. Fifty minutes of that running time is taken up by just two battle scenes. Like we said earlier on, Spielberg wanted the major battles to run in something close to real-time, because he believed that was the best way to depict the real-life experiences of the soldiers facing the battles.
At the start of the film, we see some of the events of the Battle of Normandy. It's a physical, grueling and unrelenting opening to the movie, and sets the tone for what's to come. It lasts for twenty-five minutes. Having prepared the audience to cope with such a scene, the movie ends the same way, with the battle to save Ramelle at the film's climax also lasting for twenty-five minutes.