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The beginning of this movie in spades- even having no context from the actual story at all, seeing Private Ryan break down as he enters the graveyard tells you everything you can expect from this movie.
Pretty much the whole movie, but the biggest Tear Jerker scenes are Omaha Beach, the Famous Last Words entry, and the ending.
The mother of the brothers Ryan receiving the news that three of her sons died in battle. One of the most powerful scenes in the film, moreso because it has no dialogue.
Not to mention the medic's death, particularly since you can spot exactly when he realizes that he's going to die, as well as the other soldiers' facial expressions when they figure it out too ("...m-more... morphine...") and him saying he wants to go home & crying for his mama as he dies. Combine that with his earlier monologue about his mother, and you have a brilliant, but damn depressing scene.
While the first Ryan they find turns out to be the wrong James Ryan, the way he reacts to the news, bursting into tears and begging to go home, is heart-breaking.
Private Ryan refusing to go home because he feels that the men he's serving with deserve it just as much as him, that he's not going to abandon them and they're the only brothers he has left.
Ryan's story about his brothers always does it for me. As funny as the story is, throughout the telling of it, Ryan is visibly breaking up about the knowledge that all of his brothers are dead.
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