These Are the Best War Movies Ever

Steven Steven Spielberg’s WWII has a loose connection to events from the Civil War which involve Lincoln’s letter to a woman who had lost several sons in battles. Beyond that, “Saving Private Ryan” is pure fiction. It has been noted for the uncanny realism of costumes, weapons, terrain, and fealty to actual troop movements after D-Day. Hank’s performance ranks with his very best. Like many of the best battle films, the hero does not make it to the final frame.

Stanley Kubrick’s film about the immorality of senior officers greedy for promotion stars Kirk Douglas in what many critics measure as his best role. He and Kubrick also teamed to make Spartacus in 1960. Set in WWI ravaged France in 1916. Douglas’s character, Colonel Dax, receives orders from the general staff to take an impregnable German position. The effort fails, with the deaths of scores of French infantry. As punishment for the failure, several men are tried by a military court. Dax defends them. It does not end well.

A farce, although a bloody one, about Nazi hunters in WWII. Pitt basically plays himself, but with a mediocre Southern accent as vicious Nazi killer Lieutenant Aldo Raine. In a nearly parallel portion of the film, Christoph Waltz, who has proven himself to be one of the American cinema’s best Autrian imports, plays Hans Landa, an SS colonel, an officer particularly adept at locating and killing Jews. Somewhere, woven into the film’s plot, sits a plan to kill the German high command. That, however, gets lost due to a large extent to the acting of the two leads. Quentin Tarantino directs, barely.

Cooper, one of Hollywood’s most durable and successful leading men, took another stab as the central character of a biography. His other great outing was as Lou Gehrig in “The Pride of the Yankees” (1942). Cooper plays Alvin C. York, a young man from rural Tennessee. York, is a conscientious objector, kills a number of Germans and captures another 132. Due to this, York becomes among the most decorated soldiers in American history. Cooper won the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film posted the largest box office total of 1941.

Somewhere along the path from his start as one of Hollywood’s most admired leading men in film’s that include “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) and “On the Waterfront” (1954) and his most successful films in middle age, led by “The Godfather” (1972) Brando moved into the later part of his career as Colonel Kurtz, a psychotic and deeply feared American officer located deep in the jungle during the Vietnam War. Sheen’s character has been sent to kill Kurtz, which does not work out well for either of them. Directed by Francis Coppola. Based on the 1899 novel “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad.

The film about General George Patton’s battle rich career in WWI has other characters, and actors beyond Scott, but the film’s is so dominated by these two that a fine performance by Karl Malden as General Omar Bradley barely worth mentioning. Scott’s career really only has one truly fine film, and this is it. He won the Best Actor Oscar. The movie won for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.

The film was cast-rich with solid players like McGoohan as King Edward I and thousands of extras for the elaborately and remarkably bloody battle scenes, but “Braveheart” stands out as Gibson’s great one-man show. He plays Scot William Wallace who has convinced himself he can free his people from the British. Gibson produced and directed the film, which ends badly for Wallace in the finishing frames. The movie won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, and Best Sound Effects Editing.

Pitt plays a tank commander in the WWII drama. Pitt’s action hero resume stretches out over decades. Rarely has he played a more sympathetic character than gruff Don “Wardaddy” Collier, a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant. A vicious Nazi killer, he is likely, almost tenderly, by the men he commands. The last portion of the movie, when Pitt and his tank crew take on hundreds of German’s single handed ranks among the better film conclusions of WWII pictures.

This film’s star turns out to be Christopher Nolan, of Batman fame, who wrote, directed, and produced it. The movie contains so little dialogue and so few marque actors, that some of the louded parts of battle sound nearly silent. That near silence and lack of talk, Nolan must have believed, would make the violence of war all the more vivid. Built around the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940, Nolan turns the movie into a contemplation of battle without honor or victory.

Not to be confused by the horrendous remake in 2019, this stands as the most starred studded movies about WWII with the possible exception of “A Bridge Too Far” (1977). “Midway”‘s plot runs fairly close to the actual events of the Pacific carrier battle between the U.S. and Japanese from June 4 to 7, 1942. The U.S. victory has been credited with the turn of the tide after the Pearl Harbor disaster. At its best when the air battle rages above Midway Island and the ocean around it, most of the subplot work does not add much.

An officer’s wife Kerr, falls for a sergeant, Lancaster. In the Army, that is bad karma. The movie resuscitated the career of Frank Sinatra. The famous “kissing in the surf” scene is worth the price of admission. The movie does not end well for any of the major characters. Some question whether “From Here To Eternity” is a war film. The attack on Pearl Harbor has to wait until the second half of the film. The movie won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Fred Zinnemann), Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Frank Sinatra), and Supporting Actress (Donna Reed)

Widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, Bogart and Bergman, past lovers, find themselves together in the midst of Nazi controlled French Morocco. Since they last saw one another Bergman has married a resistance hero. Bogart faces one of the great moral dilemmas in American film history. Viewers have been left, for decades, to decide if he made the correct decision.

Bogart and Hepburn were each past their primes. Nevertheless, they joined director John Houston in Uganda and the Congo in Africa to make this film about an unlikely spinster’s romance with a steamer mechanic. The movie was written by doomed film critic, poet, and novelist James Agee. Using just their tiny steamer, Bogart and Hepburn join to sink a German warship. Both live.

Pulled from the exquisite series of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin 20 novel series, this sea chase movie often ranks as Crowe’s second best after “Gladiator” (2000). Crowe plays Captain Jack Aubrey of HMS Surprise during the Napoleonic Wars. The best parts of the film involve the pursuit of a single French warship, which Crowe and his crew eventually track down. That starts the real “war” part of the movie.

Not unlike “Braveheart,” this movie requires Gibson to play a nearly unhinged killer who, over the course of many years, has had a relatively normal life. Gibson has kept himself quiet and at home with a new family after a turn an officer in the French and Indian War. The British did his family harm in the midst of American Revolutionary War. Hundreds live to play the price. Ledger, as his son, does not make it to the final frame alive.

Legend Clint Eastwood’s homage to the U.S. soldier as a killing machine, the film’s base is “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” written in part by its subject sniper Chris Kyle who kills 244 of the enemy in the Iraq War. It is the highest grossing film ever made, or starred in by Eastwood with a box office take of over $550 million to date. The film received criticism for its unusually heroic glorification of a man whose only role was to hunt and kill.

The script remains fairly close to the events of the U.S. military 1993 raid in Mogadishu when Black Hawk Super Six-One was shot down in the center of the city. Troops were not able to reach the crash site before it was overrun by mobs. The on the ground battle between Somali militia and American soldiers reminds the viewer of how bloody close quarters combat can be. Playwright and actor Shepard appears in one of the later roles in his storied career.

British prisoners of war held by the Japanese in Burma faced forced labor to build a bridge on the Burma Railway in 1942. The movie has as its base the 1952 novel written in French by Pierre Boulle. Initially, the British soldiers led by Guinness, a Lieutenant Colonel, resisted. Guinness, however, comes to believe he can shame his captors with a bridge far superior to what they might build on their own. The conflict of interest seems obvious. Holden travels for days through thick jungle to remedy the situation. The film won Oscars for Best Movie, Best Director, and Best Actor.

This WWII movie was made at the very end of Gable’s career (he died in 1960), and at the peak of Lancaster’s. The USS Nerka, deep in the Pacific, attacks a Japanese convoy. Once it has been detected, it dives and is nearly destroyed by depth charges. Gable’s character has become obsessed with destroying a Japanese destroyer that sank a submarine he commanded early in the war. Gable, the captain, is injured in the action. Landcaster takes over. Things do not turn out well for the older star.

The other outstanding WWII submarine film finds Grant as the commander of the USS Copperfin. His mission is to sneak into Tokyo Harbor, which is filled with warships, and gather data for what became known as “Doolittle Raid”, the first U.S. bombing of the Japanese capital. The Copperfin sank two Japanese warships but not without sustaining severe damages. Most of the crew, and the sub, make it home.

Among the few very well regarded movies about the Civil War, the plot involves Wayne’s character, a Union colonel, to attack a major Confederate railroad and supply stations. Holden’s character is a military doctor, torn between his hatred of war and the need to tend to wounded soldiers. Wayne falls in love with a southerner. The part in the final frames, with the viewer left to wonder if they will ever reunite.

Made by arguably America’s greatest living director Steven Spielberg, directing arguably America’s greatest living actor in Daniel Day-Lewis, people will reasonably argue this is not a war movie at all. Most of the actor centers around Lincoln’s effort to free the slaves via the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution approved by the United States House of Representatives. However, the backdrop of the movie is clearly the final battles of the war and possible Southern surrender which make the need to pass the amendment all the more urgent. Day-Lewis won the Oscar for Best Actor.

A ludicrous number of A-list actors in an amazingly expensive film. Set in the Netherlands in September 1944, the movie follows several officers in their attempt to weaken the Germans on land, sea, and air. The hope is that one huge final push will pave a quick trip to the heart of the Fatherland. Not all of the groups do well, some getting lost, killed or injured. Not what the Allies had hoped for.

Who can forget McQueen attempting to outrun their Germans on a motorcycle leaping tall barb wire fences in the middle of a long field? The story of a mass escape by British troops from Stalag Luft III. The prisoners spread far and wide as they, in small groups, try to outwit and outmaneuve a carefully devised Nazi system to return them. Some make it much further than others. A masterpiece.

Ranked at or near the top of every great film about war, the plot is simple. A professor convinces many young students that fighting for German is the height of manhood, and a moral imperative — a calling like no other. Tragedy faces each of the “heroes”, and the means and results of their demise tells several movie’s worth of stories about the horrors of battle and blind fealty to one’s country. The final message is that war is less than pointless.