War movies, the good, the bad, the ugly.

[Svengoolie 3]

Talk about war movies. Cold war movies are eligible for this topic.

"The longest day" is a great ww2 movie. Remember this movie is a true war story, the things seen in the movie happened. Yes, nuns calmly walked into an active combat zone and began treating the wounded of both sides under fire. This movie is based on true stories.

"Failsafe" is very likely the best cold war movie ever made. A very believable and plausible story of how a series of mistakes, compounded by the distrust both the east and west had for each other, could lead to a nuclear holocaust, and the price both sides might have to pay to avoid all out war. A true film noir with great actors delivering great performances. The slow progression from "something strange is going on" to "red alert" to "we can't stop this!" to the horror both that sides have brought the world to the brink of apocalypse and the price that must be paid to avoid total destruction creates an ever escalating tension that mercilessly grabs the audience by the throat and never lets go.

"The green berets" Ugh. A sack of lies, jingoism, hate, emotional exploitation and warmongering propaganda that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of, the only movie made about the Vietnam war by Americans during Vietnam, starring draft dodger john Wayne pushing the "better dead than red" mindset and portraying the enemy as so vile and subhuman they can only be viewed in shadows.  I've known vietnam vets who hated this movie. According to popular rumor a Vietnam vet who was this movie met Jane Fonda at a Hollywood party and told her that movie was such a pack of lies that someone needed to tell the american people the truth, inspiring her trip to Vietnam.

What war movies do you like or hate?

[indianasmith]

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is perhaps my all time favorite.
I also like THE PATRIOT (yes, as a historian I know it is highly inaccurate but it's just a fun flick all around!), GLORY, THE LOST BATTALION, and HBO's THE PACIFIC series.  One I watch every year is the 2004 version of THE ALAMO; it's the most accurate Alamo movie ever made, beautifully filmed and well cast, and I still don't get why it flopped at the box office.  For medieval warfare, I love Kenneth Branagh's HENRY V.  I think it is the best scree adaptation of any Shakespeare play ever.

[Alex]

Not a huge fan of war movies in general, but ones I do like are

A Bridge Too Far. A military operation grand in scale, but not enough time spent planning it. Such a waste of lives.

Zulu. Overwhelming numbers of brave Zulu's try to evict a bunch of foreign soldiers from their homeland, but come up against superior technology.

We Were Soldiers. Just for the Sergeant Major "What are you now, the god damn weather man?"

Flag Of Our Fathers / Letters From Iwo Jima. The sad tale of what happened to the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima after the war. And then a slightly unusual film to come out of the States showing the side of the war from the Japanese side.

[RCMerchant]

I have to agree with the GREEN BERETS being a pile of s**t! John Wayne glamrorizing Vietnam? Christ onna cross.
I also agree with Indy about SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
And Dark Alex with WE WERE SOLDIERS and FLAG OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA.
I would also recommend-

.FULL METAL JACKET-it's Kubrick.
.APOCALYPSE NOW of course.
.FURY- Very underrated.
. and here it goes-  the yes it's exploitive and in no way realistic- INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
.TORA! TORA! TORA! is one of my favorite films since I was  a kid. I remember watching it on the big consul TV (the one that had the record player and radio attached that sat on the living room floor and took up half the f**king room).
.GUNG HO- yep the propoaganda thing with Robert Mitchum saying " I hate japs." And the buck-toothed thick lensed glasses wearing Japanese pilots-so wrong!

[RCMerchant]

And of course DR. STRANGELOVE, FAIL SAFE and the BEDFORD INCIDENT.

[Pacman000]

And in an ironic twist, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was actually a war movie.

! No longer available

[Svengoolie 3]

Yes, the Bedford incident was a decent cold war movie that was basically "Moby dick goes nuclear".

Dr. Strangelove was a great movie but I have a major issue with it, the studio cheated failsafe by filing a false lawsuit to block its release until after Dr. Strangelove. Strangelove kind of ended the cold war hysteria movie era so failsafe never got its due recognition. That's more of an issue with the morals of the studio execs, not the movie per se'.

No one mentioned " On the beach", which was a great movie but very depressing. Still, it had a message.


Full metal jacket deserves credit for being realistic, according to a marine who was in Vietnam. It also established a trend: put R. Lee Ermy in a movie and have him killed. The audience will love it. Kirby must have been the first one to look at Ermy and say "There's a guy people want to see killed!"

[javakoala]

Full metal jacket deserves credit for being realistic, according to a marine who was in Vietnam. It also established a trend: put R. Lee Ermy in a movie and have him killed. The audience will love it. Kirby must have been the first one to look at Ermy and say "There's a guy people want to see killed!"

He was in THE BOYS OF COMPANY C. His first feature in fact. He was about the only sympathetic person the main characters ran across, and he was a hard ass in that one as well.

[javakoala]

My favorite war/military movie is THE BOFORS GUN.

It is ultimately a battle of wills between a soldier determined to meet the family curse of no male living past 30 (if I remember correctly) and his commander who just wants to get reassigned. Fantastic performances. Sadly, not a title readily available in the United States on DVD or BD.

[bob]

I add Paths of Glory, Schindler's List, Duck Soup, Life is Beautiful, The Great Dictator, Dunkirk, The Battle of Algiers, The Deer Hunter, Platoon, The 49th Parallel and Great of the Fireflies to the list

[indianasmith]

Oooh!  I forgot my new favorite, DARKEST HOUR!  Downright brilliant!

[Trevor]

The good:

SHANGANI PATROL (1970): the true story of the battle of the Shangani River in Rhodesia in 1893.
ZULU (1964): the battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.
MAJUBA (1968): the battle of Majuba Hill in 1881 between the British and the South Africans.
THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961): the ultimate anti-war film.
THE STICK (1988): South African war / horror film - very disturbing.
THE WILD GEESE (1978)

The bad:

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED: terrible film from a brilliant book.
VON RYAN'S EXPRESS: if you've read the book, the film is crap.

[Svengoolie 3]

Das boot was a good war film from "the other side".

Also in the " from the other side" category we have "Enemy at the gates". Maybe not absolutely historically accurate but a good movie reminding us that, love it or shove it, the Russian people fought the Nazis too.

[Trevor]

Not a huge fan of war movies in general, but ones I do like are

A Bridge Too Far. A military operation grand in scale, but not enough time spent planning it. Such a waste of lives.

Sounds like most of Richard Attenborough's career 

Zulu. Overwhelming numbers of brave Zulu's try to evict a bunch of foreign soldiers from their homeland, but come up against superior technology.

Brilliant film: inaccurate in many historical respects but a thrilling film. 

[Pacman000]

No Man Is An Island - Interesting story of an American soldier who survived on an island after it was taken over by the Japanese. (He had help.) Based, probably loosely, on a true story.

Submarine movies are usually good. Saw K-19: The Widowmaker a few weeks ago. That was horrific. 

I remember enjoying Memphis Belle, but I haven't seen it in a looong time so I can't say if I'd still like it.

The Great Escape is good. (Now I'll have that song stuck in my head for awhile.  )

Do Holocaust movies count?