The so-called "old man plot-hole" in Saving Private Ryan may have felt illogical for many, but it would have been more confusing if it tried to be more realistic. Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning war epic Saving Private Ryan was critically praised for its harsh realism and its graphic depiction of the battle at Omaha Beach at Normandy in a sequence that remains a pinnacle of the genre. Tom Hanks stars as U.S. Army Ranger John H. Miller, leader of a squad comprised of heroic soldiers such as Private Richard Reiben (Edward Burns), Sergeant Mike Horvath (Tom Sizemore), and Private Adrian Caparzo (Vin Diesel). They immerse themselves behind enemy lines in search of a missing paratrooper, the titular Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon).
The film opens with an elderly veteran (Harrison Young) visiting the Normandy American Cemetery and falling to his knees in front of a tombstone. After a close-up shot of his eyes, the rest of the movie starts to take place on June 6, 1944, the fateful day of the Normandy Invasion. Miller survives D-Day and is ordered by General George C. Marshall (Harve Presnell) to find Private Ryan and bring him back. Miller and his squad go through hell to accomplish their mission, including a frustrating moment where they find a different faux Private Ryan (Nathan Fillion). The group mostly sacrifice themselves for the task, but manage to rescue Ryan, who is then revealed to be the elderly veteran from the opening sequence.
The revelation of the veteran's identity is a very emotional one. Although Ryan has little screentime in comparison to the rest of the soldiers, the fact that he lived a lengthy life effectively summarizes how meaningful Miller's sacrifice was for him. However, the fact that the whole movie is framed between old Ryan's arrival to the cemetery and his intense reaction to Miller's tombstone suggests that all the events depicted in the film come from his memory. The obvious problem with this is that Ryan is absent from most of the movie's runtime. Tom Hanks' John H. Miller is the real protagonist, as his perspective is the one that moves the story forward. If the movie is truly an extended flashback, it's illogical that Ryan would have known exactly what Miller and his squad had to go through to save him, even more so considering that some of the squad died before he could meet them and that the only real interaction that Ryan shared with Miller before his death was the latter's brief bittersweet piece of advice: "earn this."
While Steven Spielberg could have found a clearer way to frame the events set in World War II, the label of "plot hole" falls a little under its own weight. If flashbacks needed to be completely faithful to the memories of the character who experienced them, then all of the action would be limited exclusively to that character's perspective. The moment the camera started showing something the character wouldn't be quite able to see, the flashback would start diverting from "the real events."
A certain degree of freedom is needed to show other vital parts of the story, although it's also common for films to exploit this quality of flashbacks to tell a story that willingly diverts from the truth, as is the case with Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller Rashomon and its unreliable retellings of a crime by different characters. That's not the case here, however, as one of its most important traits is that Saving Private Ryan seeks to accurately show the true face of war. The film would nullify its own message if it toyed with the audience.
Of course, Saving Private Ryan takes the flashbacks' freedom of perspective to the extreme, with most of the movie happening outside Ryan's point of view. However, this could suggest that the paratrooper has heard heroic accounts of his saviors' quest to rescue him, which enhances their memory as selfless heroes even more and explains why Ryan is so resolute on visiting Miller's grave after so many years.