3) Saving Private Ryan
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If you thought the Omaha Beach landing was going to take the prize for Saving Private Ryan‘s darkest scene, think again. For all the opening sequence’s grizzly, offal-heavy verisimilitude, nothing beats Private Mellish’s slow death by knife for sheer, heart-stopping (literally) brutality.
It’s partly the unexpected nature of it – of course you’d assume good guy Mellish is going to overcome the bad guy Nazi – that makes Mellish’s death so horrendous to watch. It also doesn’t help that the German soldier slowly plunging the knife into Mellish’s heart is whispering words of attempted comfort as Mellish helplessly screams and goes into shock.
Very grim stuff.