The Best WAR Movies of all Time

I cannot believe none of you have posted this, but... Bridge On The River Kwai (1957). It's the story of British POW's in a Japanese internment camp about the building of a bridge the Japanese need to cross a large river in order to gain more territory, using the British POW's to build it, using the torture of their commander, Colonel Nicholson, to achieve this end and about the force the Allies send in to destroy the bridge. It really outlines the lives of those captured by the Japanese, who were ruthless in forcing their prisoners to do what they wanted. I realise this isn't a conventional war movie, in that not too much fighting is shown, but it does show off psychological warfare that would take place in times of war and is still an important component in warfare.

 

In addition to The Bridge On The River Kwai, noted in the prior post (which is a spectacular film) David Lean directed another fantastic war film:

Lawrence of Arabia.

For my money, the first half of this film is unmatched. The story of TE Lawrence, easily one of the most amazing people of the past 100 years and his role in shaping the outcome of WWI. (The movie does not address his role in organizing that part of the world in the negotiations following the war).

Stalag 17 and The Great Escape are two wonderful films based on prison camps.

 

I have to say, watching Full Metal Jacket with a bunch of Marines is possibly the most hilarious two hours I have ever spent. Most people wouldn't get it, though. Too many inside jokes. Having a friend shout "SIGHT ALIGNMENT SIGHT PICTURE SLOOOW STEADY PRESSURE" as Private Pyle blasts Gunnery Sergeant Hartman away is fucking awesome.

"So at what point in boot camp did we just spend a couple free hours at the Confidence Course? (Joker helping Pyle over the Stairway to Heaven obstacle) I WISH we got to do that."

Most realistic line in FMJ: "If there is one thing in this world that I hate, IT IS AN UNLOCKED FOOTLOCKER!" It doesn't have the same punch as "Did your parents have any children that lived," but I could definitely see my kill hat saying it.

Back on topic:

My own opinion, in no particular order:

1. Letters from Iwo Jima
2. The Bridge on the River Kwai
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. Apocalypse Now
5. Restrepo
6. All Quiet on the Western Front

I ended up seeing Black Hawk Down a few weeks ago and was underwhelmed. It has some good scenes in it, but my attitude was just "Meh." It's not really a war movie as much as it is an action movie. A good war movie explores all the conflicting aspects of war - patriotism, duty, futility, loss, the whole nine yards... but without being overbearing and preachy. I think Remarque said it best. "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war." In my opinion, that's why Platoon wasn't so great either. Yes, we get it. War is bad. Stop playing the Adagio.

Another "Meh" movie I saw recently was We Were Soldiers. Decent, not great.

I echo the sentiment for a huge-budget awesome-scale Saving Private Ryan Meets All Quiet On The Western Front movie on the Eastern front. Make it portray a squad of Russian soldiers as they deal with living in a meatgrinder army. I don't really care if it's WW1 or WW2; the attitude was the same. At Yalta:

Roosevelt: We've made some stunning advances in minesweeping technology.
Stalin: Oh, we have people for that.

So very Russian of him, (glib, grim, and very pragmatic) and it captures the true essence of what they went through. I would pay dearly for a movie portraying the Battle of Stalingrad. If there was ever a battle that was actually an IRL version of Call Of Duty Team Deathmatch, that was it. Average lifespan of soldier in Stalingrad: 24 hours. I see a blockbuster.

 

I'd have to say it's probably the worst war film of the last 20 years. The movie is as corny as Mel Gibson's square-jawed platoon leader, and the film plays off like a tossed-off script for the show Combat, then putting its entire focus on gory make-up effects. A melodramatic bloodbath, that's all that it is. I can't imagine anybody actually liking that movie, but that's me.

Honorable Mentions:

All Quiet on the Western Front
Hell in the Pacific
The Longest Day
Hell's Angels
Wings (first film ever to win an Oscar, and the only silent one)

 

They made this movie its called Enemy at the Gates, and it is exactly as you describe above.

 

Enemy At the Gates was not bad, despite the fact that is has not one Russian in its cast (played almost entirely by Brits). It shows how monotonously stupid the Russian army was at times, rufusing to give their soldiers rifles to charge up the field, then gunning them down as cowards when the Nazi's that actually HAD weapons started mowing the unarmed Soviets down. It has some great, tense scenes once Ed Harris' urbane and educated sniper comes in to the picture, but the whole thing is nearly sunk by a stupid, unecessary love-triangle subplot.

 

My parents saw "Enemy at the Gates", and were very impressed by the relative accuracy of the film, as well as the fact that they knew about the sniper Zaitsev at all in the US. Digging further, it's based on a 1973 non-fiction book written by William Craig, who interviewed hundreds of Germans and Russians that survived Stalingrad.

 

There is a lot of debate about whether Zaitsev actually scored all the kills he is given credit for. Certainly the Soviet Union wasn't incapable of propaganda, as evidenced by the fact that the famous photograph of a Red Army soldier waving the Soviet flag over a captured Reichstag is doctored.


And Enemy At The Gates didn't even come close to depicting the true horror of that battle, which was the bloodiest in history. There were a select few scenes that did a good job of portraying some of the carnage, but the film as a whole was far too light. The Soviets suffered more than 1 million casualties, including 40k civilians. In a single month they sent 4 million shells downrange at the Germans. 95% of the city was turned to rubble. Fighting was street to street, house to house, even room to room. The Germans tried everything they could to starve, maim, or kill the Russians, the Russians resorted to drafting civilian women and children to man artillery and anti-aircraft guns. When the Soviets finally pushed into Germany they raped over 2 million german women, including up to 150,000 in Berlin alone.

There really has never been a movie that has adequately shown the eastern front in all its horrors. WWII was a war that was fought and won by the Red Army and you can not argue with that fact. It's kind of injust that that conflict has mostly been ignored while far less important contributions (Americans) are overdone to death.

 

I know; there is also debate about the existence of the German sniper he had the duel with.

Indeed. In terms of percentages, 85% of the Nazi tanks, troops, armored cars, and even 76% of their planes were fighting on the Eastern Front. In other words, the British, Americans, and French Jews were fighting against roughly one-seventh of Hitler's army, while the Soviets were fighting against the rest.

That's not to belittle the accomplishments of any Western solider, but yeah, the war was decided on the Eastern Front.

 

It's interesting that theater that the American's actually mattered most in, the Pacific, is so under represented in our media. There's so much potential there for great films: the Flying Tigers, some of the greatest naval battles ever (Coral Sea, Midway), Wake Island, the Philippines, some of the worst war crimes in history, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the American bombing campaign that obliterated a few million Japanese civilians. It's part of why I appreciate Thin Red Line all the more.

Meanwhile we've got a hundred films about D-Day.

 

The Thin Red Line was... interesting. It was Malick's (the director) meditation on nature, life, death etc. in voiceover over the story of an army company in battle. The source book by James Jones was a very gritty depiction of war, about as far from the philosophical tone of the movie as you can get. The book didn't really have any memorable characters, and the filmmakers grafted some character-related story elements* from Jones' far superior From Here to Eternity onto this film. It's kind of a weird fit, but I like it and I wish they had gone further with it.

*

Spoiler

Witt being a hardhead who goes AWOL, his relationship with Sgt. Welsh and his eventual fate

The war scenes were powerful (especially the storming of the Japanese camp) and beautifully shot. Overall, a good but somewhat unusual movie.

 

What cliches did you think it had? Certainly, the film was not a realistic depiction of war; bomb defusal experts aren't going to be doing nighttime reconnaissance or having sniper firefights with terrorists. But at the same time, it wasn't about being a realistic portrayal of the conflict; instead, it was realistic about the tension and confusion of the war.

In fact, no film I have ever seen carried across the unbearable tension, unpredictably, and uncertainty of armed conflict like "The Hurt Locker" did. The little details and constant lies and deception the US military guys face, like the boy vendor in the American camp who Renner's character suspected of being killed were just the icing on the cake.

I also loved the psychology of each of the three members of the bomb defusal unit. The guy too timid and disturbed to continue the fight. The optimal, perfect US solider who eventually succumbs to the insane tension. And the slightly crazy one who lives for that rush of emotions, even as it almost destroys him, too.

Of course, the individual scenes were wonderful too, and Renner's performance was amazing. Just an outstanding masterpiece of a film.

 

In what films?

I think you're really oversimplifying matters. Renner never struck me as the classic "maverick" character. His behavior is not meant to make himself look cool or piss other people off, but instead, he does this because of a genuine love for dangerous situations. Mackie isn't much of a "straight arrow" either, especially when he casually suggests "accidentally" shooting Renner in the head at an opportune moment.

And the fact that "never really pays the price" is the entire point of the work. It's supposed to show that out of all three of them, the one whose mindset is the most suitable for war is the borderline insane guy.

Unlike the rest of your post, this isn't a difference of opinion; this is objectively wrong. In the very first scene of the movie, where the old leader of the group gets blown to smithereens, there is tremendous tension as he is walking towards the bomb. Renner hasn't even been introduced yet.

In most of the other situations, the group has a bomb they have to defuse, with hostile-looking civilians looking on everywhere. None of this tension has to do with Renner's behavior.

You can if you want to! Personally, I like discussing the film because I loved it so much. For you, it might be boring.

 

I would think A.Q.O.T.W.F would be the best, closely tied with Apocalypse Now however I'm just a sucker for the films made recently because of the amazing and realistic special affects.

I don't think there is a more gripping scene than the beach invasion in Saving Private Ryan. I tend to like stories that have real historical characters in my war movies but I enjoyed the S.P.R story. It was unique and well done.

I even liked We Were Soldiers, it had all the sappy Mel Gibson drama but I thought it was an excellent movie and showed a great depiction of one particular battle. It was also a different view of Vietnam from a Hollywood standpoint, I'm kind of used to the gritty soldier constantly smoking saying things like "you are not meant for the Nam man", this film showed the soldiers get their first taste of combat.

While I liked Glory, having Mathew Broderick star in the best war film of all time bugs me a little. I'm not pro Mel Gibson at all but I also enjoyed The Patriot.

I have problems with some of the older movies just because they lacked the technology to really make a true battle scene, (guys don't just grab their chest and fall down when they get hit with a 50 caliber bullet) but the stories, depth and acting done in some of the other pictures were fantastic. Movies like Das Boot, Stalingrad, Bridge over the river Kwai, would have been absolute masterpieces if they had some of the modern technology that was used in movies like Saving Private Ryan. Again the movies I mentioned previously are masterpieces but with advanced special affects they could combine a historically accurate and amazing story with realistic battle sequences.

 

I love war movies...my faves from off the top of my head:

1. Apocalypse Now
2.Saving Private Ryan
3.Paths of Glory
4.Platoon
5.Full Metal Jacket
6.The Great Escape(not quite an actual WAR film, but it takes place in a war time setting.)
7. The Hurt Locker

 

If you are only looking to the American (or French or English or any other Western perspective) oeuvre of ww2 films, obviously more will be done about the American involvement and the readily cinematic DDay scenes and such. That is just common sense.

There have been plenty of movies concerned with the Eastern front, except guess what? Most of them, as per interests would dictate, are done by those countries. I already mentioned the film Come and See in this thread, which deals explicitly with the horrors on the Eastern front, specifically in Belarus. Go watch it, it's much better than anything Hollywood could have put out on the subject.

I mean really, do you want Hollywood to appropriate the Russian's story? Can't we just watch what the Russians and other former Soviet countries do with it? I assure you there has been quite a few brilliant films already, go exploring, you might find something worthwhile.

 

Mick Porter cuts and delivers my firewood. He was part of the contingent that got cut off during the battle. He says it's a pretty good movie. Lt Col. (at the time) Hal Moore called him up to go see it in the movie theater. Mick tells me that Hal thought it was a good movie.

I read the book, the movie stays truthful to it. I think it's a great movie.

 

The problem is that some of the events have conveniently been forgotten in many of those countries. The Soviet Union never really recognized the anti-semitism of the Holocaust except to consider it a massacre of Soviet citizens. Germany and Poland aren't exactly clamoring to make Holocaust films. Japan has been trying to bury its past for decades, to the point where the war crimes committed by the Imperial Army aren't even mentioned in their history books. Most Japanese don't even know about Iwo Jima, and the Japanese who fought to the death defending it.

Steven Spielberg made an excellent film about the Holocaust. Clint Eastwood made an excellent film that was not only set in the Pacific theater, but was told from the point of view of the Japanese. It's not a farce to think that Hollywood, with the technical resources they have now and a good enough crew, could tell a story that maybe the American public hasn't heard a hundred times before.