This Memorial Day, Americans may want to spend a few hours remembering some of our greatest war films. With so many options, we can help …
This Memorial Day, Americans may want to spend a few hours remembering some of our greatest war films. With so many options, we can help narrow down some of the best war movies worth revisiting or checking out for the first time. Here we will talk briefly about more than thirty war films, some that stir the patriot’s blood, others that are amusing, while many are harrowing, and still more are foreboding with a subtle anti-war message. Certainly, everyone has their own favorites list — and your favorite film may not be here – but all presented here are a great watch. (1970) Unapologetically patriotic and hardnosed, the George C. Scott vehicle Patton is a tour de force of stirring military action punched by an incredible soundtrack. The nearly three-hour film follows the life, war, and untimely death of WWII General George S. Patton that stands as one of the classic war films of all time. (1962) The Academy Award-winning The Longest Day can’t help but bring you to the edge of your seat as the film follows one of the toughest battles in U.S. history as Allied forces landed on the coast of France during the D-Day landings. It starred nearly every major Hollywood star of the day including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Red Buttons, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Jeffrey Hunter, Rod Steiger, George Segal, Robert Wagner, and many, many more. Filmed in black and white, the lack of color makes it all the more gritty and inspiring as the Allies push the Nazis back beginning the push into Europe that would eventually topple Hitler’s regime. (1993) Inspiring for its man-against-all-odds theme, Schindler’s List depicts the actions of a real-life hero, Businessman Oskar Schindler (portrayed by actor Liam Neeson), who risked his own life helping over a thousand Jews escape Nazis clutches in Krakow, Poland, in 1939. The film won seven Academy Awards and was a box-office smash. (2000) At the height of his popularity, Australian actor Mel Gibson sought to make an homage to America’s Minutemen of the Revolutionary War, and his 2000 film The Patriot became a smash hit as a result. The film is an epic historical fiction following the life of Gibson’s fictional character who the film follows through the war from the beginning. Gibson’s Benjamin Martin is seen from his early days as a reluctant participant, to growing resistance leader, to avenging angel as he takes up arms against the invading Redcoats. (1998) Starring Tom Hanks as a school teacher turned war leader, Saving Private Ryan focuses on a small team of American soldiers who are assigned the seemingly impossible task of tracking down a single soldier to return him home after he became the sole survivor of a group of family members serving in World War II. This is another film that perfectly depicts the heroism, camaraderie, and horrors of war. Indeed, it was said that the scenes depicting the D-Day landings at Normandy are so realistic, many surviving veterans were shocked into flashbacks. (1963) Another film in the grand Hollywood tradition of featuring a star-studded ensemble cast,1963’s The Great Escape gives viewers the wonderful tale of crafty POWs planning, well, a great escape from a Nazi Prisoner of War camp during WWII. The stirring film cast such stars as Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, and more. It is one of those films where viewers feel a visceral loss when title characters are killed by the enemy and also features an epic motorcycle chase by McQueen’s character as he desperately tries to make it to Switzerland. (1957) The Bridge Over the River Kwai is another one of those epic films about WWII. The film is so iconic that it was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. Starring William Holden and Sir Alec Guinness, the film portrays the hell Allied soldiers in the Pacific suffered after being captured by the Japanese Army during the War in the Pacific. This is widely considered one of the great anti-war movies. (1970) Speaking of the War in the Pacific,1970’s Tora! may not be the most historically accurate film ever made, but it is a gripping tale. It depicts the war from both the Japanese and American perspectives and is one of the early films treating both sides with respect and honor. Starring Martin Balsam, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore. Jason Robards, Takahiro Tamura, and Sō Yamamura, the film dramatizes the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent battles at sea between the two military giants. The film ends with the foreboding quote by Japan’s Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto saying, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” It is a tremendous quote if, sadly, fictitious. (2014) American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper, is both a powerful, patriotic depiction of an American hero as well as a warning against war. It won one Academy Award and became one of America’s highest-earning war films of all time. The film features Cooper as Chris Kyle, a real-life U.S. Navy SEALs sniper who racked up an impressive count during the war in Iraq. It follows Kyle through his service and right up until a veteran with PTSD murdered him once they all made it back home to Texas. The ending may shock those who don’t know the real-life tale of Chris Kyle’s life. (1941) If you want a good old-fashioned, flag-waving war film, you can’t go wrong with 1941’s epic Sergeant York. Made before so many war films were morose and gory — and before everything was in color, even — the movie follows World War One hero Sergeant Alvin York (portrayed by Golden Age film star Gary Cooper). York was a real-life war hero, a rural Tennessean who came from the hollows and hills of Appalachia to fight the Hun on the battle-scarred fields of Europe. This film is great for its 1930s-era storytelling that earned a slew of top Academy Awards as the biggest grossing film of its day. (2002) Mel Gibson comes through again in We Were Soldiers with a gritty depiction of Battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War. As Colonel Hal Moore, Gibson leads a small force of 400 American soldiers into battle to beat back a major communist Vietnamese offensive in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. While historically both sides proclaimed victory, the films shows how the small U.S. force wadded into and essentially beat back an enemy force many times larger. The film contains some of the most realistic — and harrowing — battle scenes ever filmed. (2006) This is another of Clint Eastwood’s worthy efforts to show the horror and nobility of war. The film follows the hard slog that was the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima against Japan’s dug-in Imperial Army. Featuring a young cast including Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Paul Walker, and others, this film also makes sure to show the ravages of war on our fighters, many of who see recurring issues after their service.
