# Anybody else like War movies? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 17, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748 "2005-06-17T20:15:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Mad\_Hermit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5ac83/32.png) [@The\_Mad\_Hermit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mad_Hermit)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/21 "2005-06-18T03:28:36Z")
I’d like to throw in **The Thin Red Line** for consideration. Woody Harrelson loses his butt! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/22 "2005-06-18T03:32:28Z")
I also love war films, partly because it’s a window onto a world I’ve never had to know personally, and as a woman, no one’s ever expected or encouraged military service from me. Have any of you seen [Bravo Two Zero](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120617/)? I was really impressed by the skirmish in the flat, exposed Iraqi desert: eight special forces soldiers, with no transport, armor, or groundcover, against a [platoon?] of Iraqi soldiers and one or two of their tanks. What follows is almost unbelievable but true, based on the memoir by Andy McNab. For these men, the war was really a two-parter: first the war in the desert and surrounding terrain, and then a very different kind of ordeal in an Iraqi prison, testing each man who suffered that with the harshest emotional and physical challenges. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/23 "2005-06-18T03:43:12Z")
I like many war movies. One of my favorite movies of all times is Sargeant York. I also like The Great Escape. StG ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/24 "2005-06-18T03:50:33Z")
Count me amongst those who enjoy a good war movie (whilst despising war in general). One of my favorites is the WWI movie **The Lost Battalion** (starring none other than Rick Schroeder, of _Silver Spoons_ fame!). Others that are in my collection: **Tora! Tora! Tora!** **Saving Private Ryan** **Band of Brothers** **Bridge on the River Kwai** **A Bridge Too Far** **Patton** **All Quiet on the Western Front** **Stalingrad** **Apocalypse Now** **The Deer Hunter** (though not really a war movie in itself) **We Were Soldiers** **The Thin Red Line** **The Beast** **Black Hawk Down** **Tears of the Sun** (not so much a “war” movie as a “combat” movie) **Braveheart** (hey, it counts! It may not be all that historically accurate, but there’s lot of fightin’) **Three Kings** **Zulu** ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Gene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@Soylent\_Gene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Gene)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/25 "2005-06-18T05:03:13Z")
I’m pretty much in aggreement with the OP’s choices. Good Job Wartime. My favorite war movie ever - **Where Eagles Dare**. It’s got Clint, tons of dead Nazis, cool explosives, and the most incredible blonde chick- \*\*Mary Ure \*\* [here she is](http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~hj7h-tkhs/jap_actress_html/jap_actress_ure.htm) ---
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/26 "2005-06-18T06:16:08Z")
In my collection… **Apocalypse Now The Dirty Dozen Saving Private Ryan Das Boot Battleship Potemkin The Great Escape Hell Is For Heroes** Will be in my collection one day… **The Battle of Algiers Breaker Morant Catch-22 Gallipoli Henry V M_A_S\*H Mr. Roberts Paths of Glory Platoon Regeneration Stalingrad Villa Rides** Most of you probably have seen most of these, but two of the best, The Battle of Algiers and Stalingrad, are also Foreign (French and German) and thus harder to find… but it would be well worth your time seeking them out. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/27 "2005-06-18T06:25:39Z")
The Seven Samurai, All Quiet on the Western Front, Westfront 1918, Saving Private Ryan, They Were Expendable, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Sands of Iwo Jima, The Sand Pebbles, Objective, Burma!, Battleground, The Longest Day, The Great Escape, Dr. Strangelove, Schindler’s List, Paths of Glory, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Train, The Battle of Algiers, Open City, War and Peace (1965-1967), The Burmese Harp, Das Boot, Twelve O’Clock High, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Lawrence of Arabia, The Four Days of Naples, Tora! Tora! Tora! Documentaries: Why We Fight (series), Victory Through Air Power, Target for Tonight, Listen to Britain. And if homefront movies count: Since You Went Away, Gone With the Wind, The Best Years of Our Lives, Night of the Shooting Stars, Ballad of a Soldier, The Diary of Anne Frank, From Here to Eternity. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/28 "2005-06-18T14:09:49Z")
I like war movies, too. It’s a lot easier to engage war as a fantasy than a reality, which I think explains the disconnect. When we watch a war movie, we know all the deaths and injuries are fakes. Makes a huge difference. My faves are Saving Private Ryan Band of Brothers Midway (once they get past the whole stupid romance subplot stuff early on) Zulu The Big Red One The Longest Day I like the movies where military tactics and strategy are an important part of the film. I think the reason “Saving Private Ryan” is so well-liked is that Spielberg realized that by showing early on just how brutal war is, he could raise the dramatic stakes a lot. The viewers would then understand that the troops who’d just seen their buddies literally getting their heads blown off and their guts exploded and their legs and arms shattered, now had to continue to advance into the fire that was creating all that carnage, and that there was no reason why they shouldn’t be next. The increased violence also radically increased the understanding of the courage required to do their jobs. Made it a lot less abstract. ---
**Author:** ![Balle\_M](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@Balle\_M](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balle_M)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/29 "2005-06-18T14:52:14Z")
Lots of good choices here. I’d like to add [_The Lighthorsemen_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093416/), [_Action in the North Atlantic_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035608/), and [_Sahara_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036323/) (the 1943 Bogart one) to the mix I agree with **pseudotriton ruber ruber** that \*The Battle of the Bulge \* was a joke. There is a compelling story here and I’d love to see it get a good treatment. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/30 "2005-06-18T15:53:47Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I like war movies, too. It’s a lot easier to engage war as a fantasy than a reality, which I think explains the disconnect. When we watch a war movie, we know all the deaths and injuries are fakes. Makes a huge difference. Except that it’s _not_ always faked. A few movies have made extensive use of actual war footage (cf. “Midway,” which made unflinching use of dogfighting, bomber, and battleship/carrier footage). And the makers of many war films, particularly those which are based on histories or memoirs, have taken great pains to re-create events with as much verisimilitude as possible, right down to using the actual names of individual soldiers and depicting their casualties (“Band of Brothers,” “Bravo Two Zero,” and many more). And even when the gore is toned down, or the characters are all fictional composites or left undifferentiated, or when the limitations of the filmmakers or the medium fail to convey the full heft and horror of battle, as it must (NO film will ever be able to fully convey Stalingrad) – even those films are patterned on reality, representing, however fitfully or expressionistically, real events. [I’ll never forget the first time I saw “Midway”. I was about nine or ten years old, it was a lazy weekend afternoon, and my brother and I were headed outdoors to play, when our father suggested we instead stay put and watch this movie, saying that this was good and serious, with real war footage, and that it would show us something of what war really looks like. When the battle footage sequences started to appear, he pointed them out: “that, right there, is actual footage of Americans dying, kids, from the war… those are real planes and pilots… bomber crews… and those are Japanese Zeros… Kamikazes…”. And then he’d explain that the Kamikazes were deliberately killing themselves in order to kill as many of our sailors and sink as many ships as possible. And our reaction was just, wow. Until that eye-opening experience, movies were just movies, and as much as they impressed us, we knew they weren’t \*real\*. That is, until “Midway”. (Years later, I’d make my own, less naive reassessment of “Midway,” but I digress…)] Hence the sense of reverence that many viewers feel when watching a war film, as compared to similar depictions of war and violence in a fantasy, sci-fi, or other completely fictional context. “Midway” had its corny aspects, but there’s a greater sense of _gravitas_ in even one plane going down in flames in its archival footage than there is in the entire “Battle of Hoth” sequence from **The Empire Strikes Back** – as much fun as Star Wars fans (myself included) can have in chewing over the minutia from that sequence. ---
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/31 "2005-06-18T21:58:08Z")
I forgot to add **The Beast** (Russians in Afganistan) to my list. Carry on. ---
**Author:** ![dare\_devil007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@dare\_devil007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dare_devil007)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/32 "2005-06-18T22:14:55Z")
Has anyone heard of _Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War_? It’s a movie about two Korean brothers forced to enlist in the army and fight in the Korean War. It’s a bit more of a family drama between the two brothers than it is about the actual Korean War, but there’s _Saving Private Ryan_-esque sequences, fighting and effects in it. ---
**Author:** ![ColonelDax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@ColonelDax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ColonelDax)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2005, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/33 "2005-06-18T23:17:56Z")
Just chiming in to put in a good word for _Go Tell the Spartans_. ---
**Author:** ![Wartime\_Consigliori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9d8465/32.png) [@Wartime\_Consigliori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wartime_Consigliori)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2005, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/34 "2005-06-19T22:58:29Z")
> [@Soylent Gene](#): > > My favorite war movie ever - **Where Eagles Dare**. > > It’s got Clint, tons of dead Nazis, cool explosives, and the most incredible blonde chick- \*\*Mary Ure \*\* She was pretty damned incredible, wasn’t she? 🆒 The wife and I have a running joke based on **Where Eagles Dare**. Mrs. Consigliori, for instance, might be downstairs while I’m at the computer, and she’ll be trying to yell up to the room I’m in to tell me something. After a couple of “What’s?” and “I can’t hear you!” exchanges, she’ll yell at the top of her lungs: _ **BROADSWORD CALLING DANNY BOY!!!** _ (a reference from the movie). That is my cue to log off and get my ass downstairs. FWIW- Thanks to all for your responses to this thread. There are several flicks mentioned that I haven’t seen, but I will see them soon. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2005, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/35 "2005-06-20T02:52:31Z")
> [@The Scrivener](#): > > Have any of you seen [Bravo Two Zero](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120617/)? Also has LOTR’s Sean Bean in it if that’s your thing. Enemy at the Gates painted a pretty ugly picture of Stalingrad. Also liked (not necessarily the best, just not mentioned) WWII A Bridge too Far The Dirty Dozen WWI Galipoli Legends of the Fall French & Indian War Last of the Mohicans Ancient wars: Gladiator Troy ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2005, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/36 "2005-06-20T03:03:28Z")
No war movie list would be complete without mention of Run Silent, Run Deep PT 109 In Harm’s Way The fighting Seabees (My dad was a Seabee officer in WWII) And several others whose names escape me right now. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2005, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/37 "2005-06-20T03:20:25Z")
> [@Wartime Consigliori](#): > > Me, I’m a sucker for 'em. I have a nice little collection of them on DVD at the house. I tend to go for the fictional “adventure” stories, such as **The Guns of Naverone, Where Eagles Dare, Das Boot** and **The Eagle Has Landed**. It’s questionable whether Das Boot could be called a fictional adventure, given that it was based on a true story (the journalist character in the movie was real, and wrote a book called “[Das Boot](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0304352314/qid=1119238289/sr=8-6/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i6_xgl14/102-1233442-5349760?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)” about his patrol). > [@](#): > > Anybody else got a good war movie in the field kit? Check out “Stalingrad.” Another German WWII film, from the same director as Das Boot. Another very brutal look at the war from the loser’s perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Airblairxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Airblairxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airblairxxx)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2005, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/38 "2005-06-21T00:24:43Z")
I think it’s been mentioned before, but **Band of Brothers** was pretty darn good. Also **Saving Private Ryan**. Can’t wait for the Hanks/Spielberg Pacific War epic; it’ll be similar in scope to **Brothers** only it won’t be based on an existing book. One conflict that hasn’t been mentioned is . . . umm . . . Grenada. But I’ll put in a vote for **Heartbreak Ridge**. Makes me wish I’d been a Marine. Others: **Enemy at the Gates Gallipoli The Big Red One** (just out on DVD) **Last of the Mohicans Paths of Glory Full Metal Jacket** (although this was far from Kubrick’s best; part of me is just fascinated at how he recreated Parris Island and Viet Nam while never leaving England) ---
**Author:** ![Caprese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9a28c/32.png) [@Caprese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caprese)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/39 "2005-06-21T00:45:30Z")
Have _any_ of you guys seen **Soldier of Orange**? ---
**Author:** ![waits](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df788c/32.png) [@waits](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waits)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2005, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748/40 "2005-06-21T02:38:51Z")
Personally, I’m a sucker for WWII submarine movies specifically. If I’m flipping channels and come across _ **Run Silent, Run Deep** _ or _ **Operation Pacific** _ then the next two hours are shot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-else-like-war-movies/308748.md?page=3)