The Best War Movie Of All Time

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 20, 8:27AM EST

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The Best War Movie Of All Time — © Courtesy of United Artists

War movies are nearly as old as the genre itself. One of the most written about and debated movies in history–“The Birth of A Nation”–is partially about the Civil War. Denounced today as racist, it remains known for its length and the technical skill of director David Wark Griffith. Some war films are about characters invented by the writers, like “Saving Private Ryan”. Others are about people and incidents that are real. The classic “Sergeant York” which starred Gary Cooper is an example.

24/7 Tempo has identified the best military movie of all time by creating an index based on metrics such as user and critic ratings from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes.
The list we considered includes classics as well as more recent, well-received films, and they all convey their messages effectively either by using comedy or by exploring the darkness of war.

The films we considered are from every decade, starting with the 1930s. These films are about more than a dozen different conflicts or wars. Many are about World War II. World War I is also a popular topic. Even the most recent movies we reviewed have plots set in either of these global wars.

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To determine the best military movie of all time, 24/7 Tempo developed an index using average ratings on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon, and a combination of audience scores and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator. All ratings are as of October 2021 and were weighted equally. Only movies tagged with the word “military” or the war genre tag on IMDb with at least 10,000 audience votes on that site were considered. Movies that have military elements but are not explicitly about the military experience were excluded. Directorial credits and cast information come from IMDb.

The best war movie is Apocalypse Now (1979). Here are the details:

IMDb user rating: 8.4/10 (629,925 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 94% (286,235 votes)
> Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score: 98% (96 reviews)
> Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.