Patrick Dillon
FYSM
Chuck Powell
October 17, 2019
In the movie Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller, an American Soldier, made a very controversial decision. He decided to show mercy and an enemy soldier free, this decision ended up getting him killed at the end. I believe that Captain Miller made a moral choice nevertheless wrong given the circumstances. Obviously Captain Miller did not know what would happen later on in the movie with the soldier he let live but I still think that if you are in a war and you capture a man that has just executed one of your men, he can’t be let go.
After watching Platoon and the tragic scene of the village my opinion on Captain Miller remains the same. The people that were killed in the village might not have been good people, but they were not dangerous which is why I don’t understand why some of those things were done. The boy that got his face smashed in by the gun because he was “laughing” was brutal and uncalled for in my honest opinion. It looked like the boy might have had something wrong with him which is why he was laughing, and he was clearly harmless which is why I think that was wrong. In Saving Private Ryan, the man they were debating on letting go or not was an enemy soldier who was clearly dangerous and a threat which is why I agree with the fact that Captain Millers decision was wrong.