CNN has a list of their 10 best battle scenes from movies as well as some of the worst. I would say I would have to agree with all of them except #8. The only thing I would place there would be left out do to a technicality. Since Band of Brothers was not a movie it couldn’t be in there. However I have never seen anything that compares to the scene outside of Foy where they are in the artillery barrage. I have never felt what it would be like on the receiving end of the King of Battle on screen before or since.
I’d like to see Blackhawk Down in there somewhere.
Soldier, a ridiculous movie, begins with a battle montage. One of the battles uses special effects that Sesame Street would have rejected: Kurt Russell and his fellow killing machines duck-waddle across a cardboard cutout set of a ruined city, and every now and then an Innocent Bystander pops up, throws up their hands, and screams, and then waits for Kurt Russell to swing his giant plastic machine gun at them, make “Buddabuddabudda!” noises, and shake the machine gun, the Innocent Bystander’s signal to clutch their chest and fall over dead. I was in tears laughing so hard when I saw it.
Daniel
I was in a white hot rage about the whole situation so I have never seen the movie. I’ll get around to it one of these days.
I don’t know if this counts as a ‘battle’ scene, as it doesn’t involve armed troops, but the Who’s Quadrophenia has a long, extended jaw-dropping riot scene pitting the ‘mods’ against the ‘rockers.’ Definitely something that has to be seen to believe.
The inclusion of the Lord of the Rings battles annoys me. Computer-generated scenes of imaginary armies made up of fantasy humanids using imaginary weapons with imaginary capabilities (including magic) is just a bit far for me to strech my disbelief. The same would go for Starship Troopers, but it has been so long since I saw the movie and found the whole thing tedious when I did, I can’t quite recall the scene.
I’m fascinated by WWI and would add some old-school pictures to the list. The original All Quiet on the Western Front, 1937, I think, has some great scenes that were filmed on the actual battlefields and gives, I suspect, a fair impression of what it was like to go “over the top.” Also, Wings, sometime in the 1920s, has some of the most spectacular aerial combat scenes that brings your stomach right up into your throat.
Best: Ride With the Devil, a Civil War flick set in Missouri and Kansas
Band of Brothers- by the same producers as Saving Private Ryan, so no surprise
300 of course
Worst:HBO’s Rome= why even bother showing five extras with swords and calling it a battle scene? Just cut to after the battle.
I agree with the guy in the CNN article comments section who mentioned “We were Soldiers”.
That one’s right up there with the Omaha Beach scene in “Saving Private Ryan”, anything in “Blackhawk Down”, etc…
I’d also like to say the old “Waterloo” movie from 1970, where Rod Steiger is Napoleon, and Christopher Plummer plays Wellington.
Great, sweeping shots of thousands of men marching, huge cavalry charges, helicopter shots showing the British squares, etc…
The impressive thing is that it was truly a “cast of thousands”. Apparently since it was a joint Italian/Soviet production, they got several units of the Soviet army to play the British & French soldiers, marching in columns, lines, etc… in period uniforms.
My other choice would be the beginning scene of “Enemy at the Gates”, where Zaitsev’s unit attacks the Germans in Stalingrad.
I’d also add the already famous shot “Children of Men” when the military/police forces are storming the building in the refugee camp. Maybe not a complete battle, but worthy of note nonetheless.
For worst I would have to put in any scene in Windtalkers. I was very disappointed, it is a subject deserving of a good movie treatment. It was made during the Saving Private Ryan phase of hollywood so I thought there would be realistic battle scenes. Instead we got each Marine mowing down seemingly hundreds of enemy soldiers at a time. If that is really how it happened each one of them would be weighed down by the weight of their multiple Medals of Honor.
I think you had to watch Windtalkers not as a modern movie watched but watch it like those old John Wayne ‘rah-rah’ war movies. It was a silly melodrama. Oh and an awful movie.
The article wins points for making the distinction between Pelennor Fields in ROTK before and after the magical makes all the sacrifice pointless army of the dead show up.
BUT it loses point for its ignorance in putting ROTJ on the list for worst. If you watch the Endor land battle with an actual eye for getting the details of what’s going on, the Ewoks get their asses handed to them by the shovel load for most of the battle and its Chewbacca tht wins the battle for the Rebels. Instead it falls on the same old “Teddy bears beat the empire” cliche.
Well, if they’re talking about battle “scenes” and not whole war movies, I have to disagree with “Pearl Harbor.” I thought the re-creation of the Japanese attack was brilliant, certainly more realistic than in “Tora! Tora! Tora!” I’ve talked with Navy vets who saw the Arizona go up, and “Pearl Harbor” captures it perfectly. Yes, the rest of the movie did suck like a cheap hooker, but that scene was brilliant.
“Zulu” is one of my all-time favorite movies. I own only five movie DVDs, and that’s one of 'em. The first time I saw it, when the camera pulled back from the three-tier firing line after the last battle and the bodies were stacked within touching distance of the soldiers, I just sat there with my jaw in my lap. Brilliant. My sig line comes from that movie, just before the Zulu attack (I don’t think it’s the final one – it’s been a while since I’ve watched it.) I think it just sums up so much in Everyman’s daily life.
The list is missing the most awesome battle scene ever filmed – and in the pre-CGI era at that.
The monumental 7-hour Russian version of War and Peace has (IIRC) the Battle of Borodino filmed in epic and loving detail – it looks as if they put a camera on a glider and flew it over a battlefield full of costumed men and equipment, all in proper battle formation, with smoke and firing. The damned scene seems to go on forever. I think I heard or read that they got quite a bit of the Russian ar,my out there to do this scene
Absolutely! The night attack (by NVA?) was a heart-stopper. I almost wet myself when the first flare went off.
The last battle scene in “Platoon” had me on the edge of my seat, but I’ve only seen it once. I don’t know how realistic it was, but the RPG coming into the foxhole was very effective, from a made-me-stop-breathing standpoint.
That movie really bothered me for the same reason - here is a chance to explore a little-known (at least to me) use of aboriginal soldiers during the war and they muck is all up with garbage about Nicholas Cage and his hearing loss.
I was pretty ticked for a while.
**Loach - ** Blackhawk Down is an excellent movie and trully shows the men as they should be - caught in a horrible situation and doing the best they could. It really doesn’t sugar-coat much. My mom (no military background) found it confusing, but I thought that made it more effective - urban firefights are confusing. I am not US military (Canadian Army reservist), but I still really enjoyed it.
bump – are you sure you’re recallingWaterloo? I saw that film (ages ago), and I don’t recall being impressed by the battle scenes. But your description does seem to tally with mine on the Russian version of War and Peace, which did have those swooping shots over French and Russian forces, portrayed by the Soviet army.
Great battle scenes left out:
Ran
Alexander Nevsky – the battle in the snow (ripped off by Mulan)
Worst:
Any of the battle scenes in Starship Troopers. As Jim Macdonald pointed out, “It occurred to me that if you’d given me two grenades, a Thompson submachinegun, and a twenty-minute start, that I could have taken on the Mobile Infantry. So could you.”
Plus, the DVD has a commentary track by three of the soldiers involved in the battle, including the character portrayed in the film by Tom Sizemore.
Interesting point. I thought the battle scenes in the newer movies were worse because of excessive CGI and camera cuts - but that doesn’t make for good copy the way Ewok jokes does.
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