The 20 Best War Movies Ever Made

The 20 Best War Movies Ever Made The best war films aren't about heroism. They're about what combat does to the people inside it - and the people waiting at home. Hollywood has a long history of glamorizing war, and the films on this list refuse to play that game. They show mud, blood, terror, boredom, and the moral compromise that comes with pointing a weapon at another human being. If a war film makes you want to enlist, it has failed. Every film on this list succeeds. 20. Hacksaw Ridge (2016) Mel Gibson directed a World War II film about a conscientious objector who refuses to carry a weapon, and the Okinawa battle sequences are among the most visceral ever filmed. Andrew Garfield's Desmond Doss - a medic who saved seventy-five men without firing a shot - is a genuinely inspiring figure, and Garfield plays him with a sincerity that avoids saccharine territory. The ridge scenes are hellish. Gibson knows how to film violence, and here he uses that skill to argue against it. 19. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) David Lean's POW epic asks a question that has no comfortable answer: at what point does duty become collaboration? Alec Guinness's Colonel Nicholson is a British officer who becomes so invested in building a bridge for his Japanese captors that he loses sight of which side he's on. William Holden's American soldier provides the moral counterweight. The final ten minutes - the detonation, Nicholson's realization, "What have I done?" - is one of the great climaxes in cinema. 18. Black Hawk Down (2001) Ridley Scott's recreation of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu is the most technically accomplished combat film ever made. The sustained firefight that occupies most of the film's runtime is immersive to the point of being punishing - the sound design puts you in the middle of the kill zone. Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, and Eric Bana anchor a huge ensemble. There's no political commentary, just the chaos and terror of men trying to survive. That absence of context is itself a statement. 17. Das Boot (1981) Wolfgang Petersen's submarine film is the most claustrophobic war movie ever made. Following a German U-boat crew during World War II, the film makes you feel the crushing pressure of the deep, the terror of depth charges, and the boredom between engagements. Jurgen Prochnow's captain is a man slowly being ground down by a war he knows is lost. The flooding sequences are physically distressing to watch. At three hours, the Director's Cut is the only version worth seeing. By the end, you need fresh air. 16. The Deer Hunter (1978) Michael Cimino's Vietnam epic follows three steelworkers from a Pennsylvania wedding to a Saigon prison camp to the broken aftermath at home. The Russian roulette scenes are among the most tense in cinema - Christopher Walken's thousand-yard stare as he plays the game becomes the film's defining image. De Niro is magnificent as the strong friend who can't save everyone. The final scene - the group singing "God Bless America" with tears streaming - is ambiguous in the most powerful way possible. 15. Come and See (1985) Elem Klimov's Belarusian masterpiece is the most harrowing war film ever made. Following a teenage boy through the Nazi occupation of Belarus, it depicts atrocities with such unblinking intensity that the film was suppressed for years. Aleksei Kravchenko's face literally ages over the course of the shoot - Klimov used hypnosis and live rounds to get authentic reactions. The village burning sequence is cinema's most disturbing scene, and that's not hyperbole. You will never forget this film. You will never want to watch it again. 14. Dunkirk (2017) Christopher Nolan stripped the war film down to pure survival. Three timelines - land, sea, air - converge on the Dunkirk evacuation, and Nolan's relentless pacing leaves no room for speeches, backstory, or sentimentality. The Spitfire sequences are breathtaking. The mole sequence is claustrophobic and terrifying. Hans Zimmer's ticking-clock score creates anxiety at a physiological level. Tom Hardy acts entirely through his eyes behind a flight mask. It's the shortest Nolan film and possibly his most efficient. 13. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) Clint Eastwood did something Hollywood almost never does: he told a World War II battle from the Japanese perspective. Ken Watanabe's General Kuribayashi is a cultured, strategic leader who knows the battle is unwinnable and fights it anyway. Kazunari Ninomiya's Private Saigo provides the everyman perspective. The cave sequences are devastating. Eastwood refused to sanitize or demonize, and the result is one of the most humane war films ever made. It's the companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, and it's the better film by a distance. Think you know your war classics? Test yourself with our Ultimate Movie Trivia Card Pack - 500+ questions for £3.99. 12. Platoon (1986) Oliver Stone drew from his own Vietnam experience to create the most authentic ground-level combat film of the 1980s. Charlie Sheen's Chris Taylor caught between Tom Berenger's brutal Barnes and Willem Dafoe's humane Elias is the moral spine of the film. Dafoe's death - arms raised, Christ-like, as the helicopter pulls away - is one of the most iconic images in war cinema. Stone won the Oscar for directing, and the film won Best Picture because it told the truth that other Vietnam films danced around. 11. The Great Escape (1963) John Sturges' POW escape film is the most purely entertaining war movie ever made. Steve McQueen on a motorcycle, James Garner scrounging supplies, Charles Bronson digging tunnels - the ensemble cast makes incarceration look like the greatest team-building exercise in history. McQueen's fence jump is iconic despite being performed by a stunt double. The escape itself is a masterwork of mounting tension. The ending reminds you that entertainment and tragedy can coexist. 10. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Stanley Kubrick split his Vietnam film into two halves that feel like different movies, and both are masterpieces. The first half - R. Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman breaking down recruits at Parris Island - is the most terrifying depiction of military indoctrination ever filmed. Ermey improvised most of his dialogue, and every line is scorched into memory. The second half in Hue City is colder and more disorienting. The sniper scene at the end - and the choice it forces - is Kubrick's final statement on the dehumanizing machinery of war. 9. 1917 (2019) Sam Mendes' one-shot conceit (actually a series of brilliantly disguised cuts) follows two soldiers crossing No Man's Land to deliver a message that will save 1,600 men. Roger Deakins' cinematography is the real star - the flare-lit destroyed town at night is one of the most beautiful sequences in war cinema. George MacKay's exhausted face carries the entire film. The river of bodies. The running through the trenches. Mendes made the war film as physical experience, and it's extraordinary. 8. Paths of Glory (1957) Kubrick's World War I film is a furious indictment of military leadership. Kirk Douglas is a colonel defending three soldiers chosen as scapegoats for a failed assault, and the trial is a kangaroo court of staggering cynicism. The trench assault - tracking shots following soldiers into machine gun fire - influenced every combat sequence that followed. The final scene, where German soldiers sing for weeping French troops, is Kubrick's most humane moment. It was banned in France for years. The truth tends to be unwelcome. 7. Schindler's List (1993) Spielberg's Holocaust film operates on a scale that feels almost documentary. The liquidation of the Krakow ghetto is the most horrifying sequence in mainstream American cinema - children hiding, soldiers shooting into crowds, the girl in the red coat moving through the chaos. Liam Neeson's Schindler evolves from profiteer to saviour, and the "I could have got more" breakdown is the emotional detonation the entire film builds toward. Ralph Fiennes' Amon Goeth, shooting prisoners from his balcony, is the banality of evil given a face. This is cinema as moral imperative. 6. The Thin Red Line (1998) Terrence Malick's Guadalcanal film is the anti-Saving Private Ryan - where Spielberg shows you the horror of war through action, Malick shows it through contemplation. The voiceover narration drifts between multiple characters' inner lives, and the result is a meditation on nature, violence, and the soul's relationship to both. Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, and a dozen other stars populate a film that treats war as a spiritual crisis. The tall grass assault is stunning. Hans Zimmer's score is transcendent. 5. Saving Private Ryan (1998) The Omaha Beach sequence changed war cinema permanently. Twenty-four minutes of the most harrowing combat ever filmed - Spielberg's camera shaking, soldiers drowning, bullets tearing through water and flesh without mercy. Tom Hanks's trembling hand tells you everything about Captain Miller's psychological state. The film's thesis - that the cost of saving one man can only be justified if that man earns it - gives the action a moral framework. The bridge defense at the end is a masterwork of escalating tension. Every war film since exists in its shadow. 4. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Already covered. Kubrick's two-act structure is more ambitious than it gets credit for - the transformation from civilian to killer in Part One directly informs the moral paralysis of Part Two. "Me so horny" and "the dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive." Kubrick's Vietnam is a machine that eats people, and the film watches it happen with cold, unblinking precision. 3. Come and See (1985) Already covered. Klimov made the definitive anti-war statement. Kravchenko's face at the beginning of the film and at the end are separated by what looks like thirty years of aging but was actually months of shooting. The film reverses a montage of Hitler's life back to his baby photo, and the boy can't shoot. That's the film's answer to war. That's the only answer that matters. 2. Saving Private Ryan (1998) Already covered at five. Adjusted. Spielberg's Omaha Beach is the most important sequence in war cinema, and the emotional weight of Hanks's journey - from the beach to the bridge to the cemetery - gives the spectacle its meaning. "Earn this." The most loaded two words in the genre. 1. Apocalypse Now (1979) Coppola's Vietnam odyssey isn't really a war film. It's a film about what war does to the human soul, told as a river journey into the heart of darkness. Martin Sheen's Willard. Robert Duvall's Kilgore. Dennis Hopper's photojournalist. Brando's Kurtz, lurking in the shadows, whispering about horror. The helicopter attack set to "Ride of the Valkyries" is the most iconic sequence in war cinema. The Do Lung bridge - "Who's the commanding officer here?" "Ain't you?" - is war reduced to absurdity. Coppola nearly died making this film. The madness of the production mirrors the madness on screen. The horror. The horror. Nothing else comes close. Honourable mentions: Downfall, Beasts of No Nation, Fury, Gallipoli, The Hurt Locker, and Grave of the Fireflies - which is animated, which is why it's not on this list, but which is one of the greatest war films ever made in any medium.