The 50 greatest war films of all time
Fall in for TONY's list of mighty military movies.
Thu May 26 2011
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War films: Duck, You Sucker! (1971)
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War films: The Big Red One (1980)
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War films: Men in War (1957)
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War films: Saving Private Ryan (1998)
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War films: Casualties of War (1989)
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War films: Das Boot (1981)
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War films: The Thin Red Line (1998)
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War films: The Steel Helmet (1951)
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War films: The Hurt Locker (2008)
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War films: Empire of the Sun (1987)
Duck, You Sucker! (1971)
Scuzzy outlaw Rod Steiger and mysterious explosives expert James Coburn reluctantly team up to rob a bank, only to be drawn into the bloody Mexican Revolution. This lesser-known gem from Fistful of Dollars–trilogy auteur Sergio Leone brilliantly shifts between broad comedy and sobering tragedy, and you'll be humming Ennio Morricone's incredible score for days.—Keith Uhlich
The Big Red One (1980)
Director Sam Fuller's earthy WWII picture, starring Lee Marvin at the end of his likable career, might have lost the battle at the box office, but it's won the war of reputation: A 2004 reconstruction added nearly 50 minutes of excised material, including many off-kilter yet vivid scenes from veteran Fuller's own recollections of the battlefield.—Joshua Rothkopf
Men in War (1957)
The director, Anthony Mann, was best known for his Westerns that pinned heroes in uncomfortable, craggy environments. When he tried his hand at a combat film (this was his first), he set the action in a Korean no-man's land where an American platoon led by Robert Ryan finds itself stranded. The result was an uncommonly tough movie for the Ike era.—Joshua Rothkopf
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Steven Spielberg's WWII drama weds an intimate story to the sweep of history—and even if you didn't care for the fortunes of one lucky soldier, you couldn't avoid being floored by the movie's epic mounting of the 1944 Omaha Beach landing. Spattered with gore and mud (and running a harrowing 27 minutes), the sequence has no equal on this list, or anywhere else—Joshua Rothkopf
Casualties of War (1989)
No stranger to confrontational cinema, Brian De Palma takes a lurid premise—American soldiers kidnap a Vietnamese village girl to use as a sex slave—and makes a harrowing statement about how easily integrity is discarded in battle. A mortified Michael J. Fox, beautifully cast against type, plays the squad's lone dissenter.—Keith Uhlich
Das Boot (1981)
If, as many have said, warfare is a state of mind (as well as a geostrategic one), no film captures that interiority with such pressure-filled flair as this one. Set hundreds of feet below the ocean in a seeping, clanking U-boat, Wolfgang Peterson's international smash almost made you forget its heroes were German.—Joshua Rothkopf
The Thin Red Line (1998)
After a 20-year absence from filmmaking, the reclusive Terrence Malick returned with this astounding adaptation of James Jones's novel about the Battle of Guadalcanal in WWII's Pacific theater. The overall tone is philosophical and introspective (as is the director's latest, The Tree of Life), though Malick proves himself a confident director of action sequences, too.—Keith Uhlich
The Steel Helmet (1951)
Ex-GI Samuel Fuller brings his rough-and-rugged perspective to this Korean War classic. A ragtag group of soldiers takes refuge from snipers in a Buddhist temple. The longer this respite lasts, the greater the racial and ideological tensions grow. The writer-director's tabloid-headline style gives the proceedings a charged immediacy that lands with a gut punch.—Keith Uhlich
The Hurt Locker (2008)
All eyes should be on director Kathryn Bigelow's next film, the uniquely well-positioned Kill Bin Laden (now, presumably, with a different coda). But it's worth recalling that her Oscar winner relied less on happy endings as much as an acute portrayal of the daily pressures of Iraq-based bomb defusers.—Joshua Rothkopf
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Steven Spielberg directed this stirring coming-of-age tale, in which a fantasy-prone English boy (Christian Bale, in his film debut) is sent to live in a Japanese internment camp after the Allied abandonment of Shanghai in 1941. Twelve-year-old Bale makes an indelible impression in the lead role, all juvenile swagger until the terrible realities of his situation wear down his resolve.—Keith Uhlich
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