Top 10 War Movies of all Time

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 10/31/2017 | J Hines

[w1n1]

What’s your top 10 war movies that would make you binge watch all day? This list ranks the best movies about war, battles, and military conflicts. These films recreate some of the most significant events in world history from a variety of perspectives and with a variety of purposes and intentions. Some top war films attempt to recreate as realistically as possible the events that they depict, either from an omniscient perspective permitted by historical study or from the point of view of the soldiers and civilians involved in the conflict itself. Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, for example, was both praised in its time and heavily criticized for bringing a “you are there” sense of realism – and little outside or cultural perspective – to a recreation of the Battle of Mogadishu. The best war movies of all time differ widely in their handling of the subject matter, but they all strike a chord with viewers now and in the time when they came out.

Some of the greatest war films use war as a backdrop to look at larger issues – such as man’s inhumanity to man or the crippling impact of post-traumatic stress – or just as a meditation on war itself. Still other films like Glory and Band of Brothers examine the personal drama of a few individuals, and mine it for larger insights about the meaning of war and the impact that violence has on individual human lives.

Finally, some war films – particularly those made during the classic Hollywood era – are simply adventure films with war providing a compelling setting and situation. The Great Escape, for example, remains a classic not because of its grand ideas about the nature of war, but because it is a ceaselessly entertaining spectacle. No matter what type of film, there’s no denying that these are certainly the best war movies ever.

Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American epic drama war film set during the Invasion of Normandy in World War II. Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat, the film is notable for its graphic and realistic portrayal of war, and for the intensity of its opening 27 minutes, which depict the Omaha Beach assault of June 6, 1944. It follows United States Army Rangers Captain John H. Miller and a squad as they search for a paratrooper, Private First Cl…

Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay by Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford was based on Hasford’s novel The Short-Timers. The film stars Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Dorian Harewood, Arliss Howard, Kevyn Major Howard, and Ed O’Ross, and its storyline follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their training and the experiences of two of the platoon’s Marines..

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic adventure war film set during the Vietnam War. Produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, and Robert Duvall. The film follows the central character, U.S. Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard, of MACV-SOG, on a mission to kill the renegade and presumed insane U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. The screenplay by John Milius and Coppola..

Platoon

Platoon is a 1986 American war film written and directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen. It is the first film of a trilogy of Vietnam War films by Stone. Stone wrote the story based upon his experiences as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam to counter the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne’s The Green Berets. It was the first Hollywood film to be written and directed by a veteran of the Vietnam War. See the rest of the top 10 war movies of all time list here. What's your favorite?

[nanetteclaret]

“So Proudly We Hail”. Stars Claudette Colbert in the true story of the nurses trapped on Corregidor.

Films about those who kept the home fires burning and the impact of the war on them:

“Mrs. Miniver”

“Since You Went Away”

And the top film about the impact of war on the returning servicemen and their families:

“The Best Year’s of Our Lives”

[wbill]

Well, while I was watching "Fury", and watching the Americans more-or-less loot and pillage the town, steal anything not nailed down and screw (rape?) anything that moved ...I kept asking myself, "Would my Grandfather, and all the other men of his generation that I know (including some men that he commanded) do something like this?"

The answer kept coming back as "no". Even assuming that it was a different time, and that they were different people from the kindly grandfather types that I met later in their lives, I still just don't see that happening. Too much integrity, even in a wartime situation where anything goes.

I could *never* see Grandpa allowing the men in his unit to carry on like that. Those that I knew, at least, wouldn't, and if any others had, it would not have been tolerated.

I'm sure that sort of thing happened - I'm not that naïve - but I think that the characters were made into what Hollywood thought soldiers were like, rather than what they really were like.

[Albion Wilde]

Well, while I was watching "Fury", and watching the Americans more-or-less loot and pillage the town, steal anything not nailed down and screw (rape?) anything that moved ...I kept asking myself, "Would my Grandfather, and all the other men of his generation that I know (including some men that he commanded) do something like this?" The answer kept coming back as "no".

You are probably correct about that -- some of it went on, but not nearly to the extent that Hollyweird would like us to revisionistically believe. It was also over the top to see the young woman just take a soldier into her bedroom in front of her mother in a Catholic country. Scenes like that are disgusting. Young people today cannot imagine what it was like to live in a Christian culture, as us older folks still alive did, and remember well.

As for my year-old memories of the film, I was more interested in the relationship between the seasoned warriors and the little snowflake whom they had to harden up; that was the take-away for me, since he did end up fighting and surviving. To me, that was an anti-snowflakism message. War is hell. Men have to be hard to fight when a fight is inevitable.

[freefdny]

The Caine stuff is great and it reminds me of Pacino in The Godfather. Paramount didn’t want him to begin with and supposedly hated the early takes they saw. But once the execs got to see the restaurant scene where Michael does the shooting they left him alone.

[freefdny]

The Caine stuff is great and it reminds me of Pacino in The Godfather. Paramount didn’t want him to begin with and supposedly hated the early takes they saw. But once the execs got to see the restaurant scene where Michael does the shooting they left him alone.

[L.A.Justice]

Sgt York
A Bridge too Far
To Hell and Back
The longest Day
________________________________

I did like A BRIDGE TOO FAR...I did read the book...

The movie had big names...Like Michael Caine and Robert Redford...

Operation Market Garden was a disaster...

[dfwgator]

I didn’t know this, but each scene in The Longest Day was shot twice. Once with the actors speaking in their native tongue, and the other in English.

I tried to watch the all-English version, couldn’t do it, I much prefer my Germans to speak German and read the subtitles.

[21twelve]

Hell in the Pacific.

Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune stranded on a Pacific island.

Is that the one where he finds himself stranded on the island with what I recall is an abandoned school? And then he finds the gal? Waiting/attempting rescue - but also having to worry about the Japs coming across their little island? If so I watched that years ago based on a Freeper recommendation - good flick.

Hell in the Pacific on youtube: (Not the one I was thinking of).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4SV6PVWd3A

Found the one I had watched and it was good “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” with Robert Michum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYKMlJZVjNA

[Political Junkie Too]

No, the two are alone on an island. There is practically no dialog in the movie, too, because Mifune's English was poor and he was self-conscious about it.

There were other movies about schoolchildren:

• Father Goose - Cary Grant plays an island coast watcher in the Pacific, and comes across a woman and seven children he has to rescue.
• The Pied Piper - Monty Woolley plays an Englishman vacationing in France when the Nazi invasion begins, and he leads an ever-growing bunch of children to safety.

-PJ

[MPJackal]

I was stationed in Germany and Netherlands in the 80’s and 90’s. I got to visit some of the sites involved in both Operation Market Garden, Battle of the Bulge, and others. I think the most memorable to me was Malmedy (sp), site of the massacre. Very sobering.