War movies are interesting, because everybody is familiar with the concept of war, but very few have actually experienced its realities. Movies about war provide filmmakers with an opportunity to explore the philosophical and ethical implications of international conflict, as well as depicting the horrors of warfare from the perspective of the soldiers fighting on the frontlines.
Steven Spielberg’s recreation of the D-Day landings in Saving Private Ryan was so visceral and historically accurate that it triggered PTSD attacks in veterans who were on the beaches in Normandy. Some of the greatest movies of all time belong to the war genre.
10 Platoon
Oliver Stone decided to make a movie about the Vietnam War after seeing The Green Berets, a propagandic pro-war piece starring John Wayne, a huge supporter of the U.S. military who never served a day in his life. Stone, on the other hand, had actually fought in Vietnam, and didn’t believe that The Green Berets reflected his first-hand understanding of the war at all.
So, he made Platoon, one of the few Vietnam War movies to have been helmed by a veteran of the conflict itself, drawing from his own harrowing warzone experiences.
9 Schindler’s List
Based on the true story of a businessman who left the Nazi Party when he could no longer ignore the horrors of the Holocaust and used his connections to save 1,200 Jews from concentration camps, Schindler’s List is Steven Spielberg’s definitive cinematic statement on the Holocaust.
By focusing on the hopeful story of a few hundred Jews who got saved as opposed to the six million who were killed, Spielberg made a movie about the Holocaust that encapsulates the evils of genocide without losing hope in humanity.
8 Dr. Strangelove
Just as Charlie Chaplin satirized the Nazis at the height of World War II in The Great Dictator, Stanley Kubrick satirized nuclear tensions at the height of the Cold War in Dr. Strangelove.
The bitter irony of the movie’s ending, in which the WWII-era optimism of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” is juxtaposed against the nuclear annihilation of all life on Earth, makes it one of the greatest final scenes in film history.
7 Dunkirk
The story of the evacuation of Dunkirk made for a different kind of Hollywood war movie, because it was a crushing defeat for the Allies and didn’t involve American forces. But Christopher Nolan made a movie about an Allied defeat that captures the unwavering spirit that led to the Allies’ victory.
Split between the land, the air, and the sea, Dunkirk follows several Allied soldiers’ attempts to flee the titular French commune. In the movie’s inspiring final moments, the soldiers worry they’ll be returning home as pariahs, only to find that their countrymen are just glad they made it back at all.
6 The Deer Hunter
Michael Cimino’s three-hour epic The Deer Hunter is more about the people who fought in the Vietnam War than the war itself. Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage star as three small-town blue-collar workers who are drafted to fight in the war.
The movie’s opening act introduces the characters, then there’s a brief chaotic act set in Vietnam, then the final act explores the irreversible psychological and physical impact that the conflict has on the central trio of characters.
5 Paths Of Glory
Stanley Kubrick didn’t just make the perfect anti-war movie with Paths of Glory; he told the definitive tale of the uphill battle faced by an individual who stands up to a corrupt institution.
Kirk Douglas stars as Colonel Dax, who pulls his men out of a suicide mission and is subsequently forced to defend their lives in a court-martial when they’re tried for cowardice.
4 The Hurt Locker
While age-old conflicts like the Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War have been covered by dozens of on-screen depictions, there isn’t enough distance from newer wars like the Iraq War for many movies to have been made about them.
But Kathryn Bigelow made a powerful thriller about the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker, that ranks alongside the genre’s greatest entries. Bigelow beat her ex-husband, Avatar director James Cameron, to Oscar glory with The Hurt Locker.
3 Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s last large-scale epic Ran isn’t based on any specific war or conflict; it’s an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear that recontextualizes the story to Japan as a Sengoku-era warlord bequeaths his kingdom to his sons and quickly finds out just how ruthless they are.
From its vibrant costume design to its romantic-style musical score to its battle sequences that give The Lord of the Rings a run for its money, Ran is one of the greatest movies ever made.
2 Saving Private Ryan
While there’s no way that the U.S. Army would send an entire platoon across a wartorn country to save one guy, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is, on the whole, one of the defining movies about the Second World War.
Tom Hanks makes for a compelling lead as a schoolteacher who’s woefully unprepared for combat and the movie was such a huge hit that it revived public interest in World War II.
1 Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola and his cast and crew went a little mad in the jungle during the long, troubled production of Apocalypse Now. Borrowing the story of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now follows Captain Willard’s journey into Cambodia to terminate Colonel Kurtz, who’s defected from the U.S. military and started a cult-like militia with local tribespeople.
There are three cuts of the movie out there, all with varying degrees of masterpiece status, but every cut of the movie is a cinematic odyssey that captures the chaos of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a bitter, alcoholic, veteran soldier at the end of his rope.