I too am a big Zulu geek, so I was glad to see it listed.
I was surprised that neither version of Henry V (Olivier, Branagh) showed up. Haven’t seen either, but I always heard that their depictions of Agincourt were pretty darn good.
Yep- I distinctly remember the charge of Ney’s cavalry at the British squares being shot from a helicopter (or somewhere much higher than the battlefield anyway)
has lots of the shots from the movie that I remember. Keep in mind that in the shots, they’re actual men, not CGI or matte paintings.
That’s been on my Netflix queue forever but I keep putting it back down. From what I’ve read it’s religiously faithful to the book, indeed does use tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers in period costume, and was the most expensive movie ever made (well over $1 billion USD when adjusted for inflation) and the largest cast (well over 100,000 extras) ever assembled. On a similar note, the “Joseph Goebbels production” Third Reich backed film Kolberg actually diverted thousands of Nazi soldiers to serve as extras at the height of World War II!
I’ve read that Birth of a Nation has some of the most accurate Civil War battle scenes ever filmed, in part because the advisors and even many of the extras were actual (aged but still ambulatory) Civil War veterans (and of course Griffith’s father having been a Confederate Colonel he had special interest in getting it right).
An obscure movie with a great battle scene was the 1977 made for TV version of The Four Feathers (which was a very good movie overall as well). The background of the movie was the British Army fighting to put down the Mahdi uprising in Sudan in the 1890’s. One scene shows a British infantry column on patrol that is ambushed by the Sudanese. The British form a square but are outnumbered and keep pulling back into a smaller and smaller circle until the last few individuals are overrun. The “battle” is portrayed very well - both sides act in a realistic manner and the action takes place in what seems like “real time”.
Let’s not forget the fistfight in They Live.
Same here, and I avoided watching the movie for a long time. Probably for the same reasons as you. When I finally did see the film, I was glad I did and kinda wished I hadn’t waited so long. You should check it out, it’s a well done movie, IIRC, many of the film’s consultants were Army personnel that were there.
Sgt Matt Eversmann was one of my ROTC instructors in college, the year after I read the book and the same year that the film came out, and he thought that the film was well done. That’s good enough for me.
I don’t know the name of it, wish I did- somebody here may get it from the description- but I was watching a John Wayne movie the other night set in the late 19th century. He was in a gunfight with the bad guys in a rocky western terrain and takes a bullet in the arm (not a scrape, hits the arm). The Duke being 200 pounds and one lung of sheer macho, he keeps fighting with his good arm.
Okay…
The gun the bad guy was using was either a Springfield Musket or an Enfield Musket, couldn’t tell which but it was one or the other. These things fired a .58 calibre ball with enough force to do some damage but without enough force to exit when fired from a distance. If you were unfortunate enough to be hit in the arm by one of these things, you’re not gonna say “Ouch! My arm!” and then return to shooting. You’re gonna go down on the ground and cuss God, your mama, Texaco, Milton-Bradley and anyone else you can think of until you pass out from shock and blood loss. Then, you’re probably going to either wake up with an arm that’s been sawed off or you’re never wake up again, because in the 19th century an inordinate number of people had bones in their upper arms and those bones tended to shatter when being hit by a .58 calibre missile. Unlike today, there wasn’t a helluva lot to do other than saw the arm off if you didn’t want to die of any number of unpleasant things. Even in the 50s or 60s when I’d guess this movie was made (it was color but wasn’t the old Banacek or Shootist Duke) I’m surprised they tried to pull that.
Actually, on the last occasion I saw Bondarchuk’s War and Peace I wound up suggesting that his version of Borodino was strikingly uncinematic. Yes, he is deploying about half the Soviet Army, but he seemed to think that was sufficient and the way he films them is rather unsurprising, even disorganised. Big dull tracking shots through lots of stuff, while at the same time half-heartedly realising that he ought to be just concentrating on Pierre’s much more limited perspective of the battle.
Whereas I agree with bump about Bondarchuk’s aerial shots in Waterloo being particularly effective. I remember virtually nothing about the film except the overhead images of the French cavalry sweeping round the squares.
Various nominations for great cinematic battles: Paths of Glory for the charge done as the huge tracking shot across no-mans land and the night fight during the fall of Toulon in Gance’s Napoleon. Plus additional votes for Alexander Nevsky and Blackhawk Down.
The inclusion of Starship Troopers is ludicrous.
I liked (mostly) the LotR movies, but I’d hesitate to include anything in a list of great battles where 90% of the action is CGI.
Like some others here, I have to reject battles that rely on CGI, so that leaves out 3 and 8; practical effects and hordes of extras, please. I’ll agree with the selection of 1, 2, 5, and 7, but not necessarily in that order; didn’t care for 6 and 10, and haven’t seen 9 so can’t comment.
Some I’d consider for inclusion are:
Final battle for Warsaw, The Pianist; Adrian Brody watches from an upper-floor apartment as a tank battle rages outside, and as a shell explodes nearby, deafening him (as keyed by the soundtrack). The highly-praised battle sequence in Children of Men, mentioned by Whiteknight, is remarkably similar in tone and action.
Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down; already mentioned by several posters. The movie contains many cliche’d elements, but the relentless fighting is incredibily intense and exhausting.
Free French assault on Ouistreham, The Longest Day; in a film with numerous flaws and some really crappy dialogue and acting, this sequence is nevertheless jaw-dropping, starting with a long aerial shot following the French forces as they converge on the town center, then moving in to follow a young commander trying to figure out what to do as his troops are cut down by murderous fire from the Germans holed up in the casino. IMO this scene captures the desperation and chaos of battle like few others.
Siege of Fort William Henry, and Indian attack on the retreating British column, Last of the Mohicans; a lengthy sequence that relentlessly builds in tension as the fort is gradually brought under siege, then, after the British surrender, Huron forces first harass, then horrifyingly massacre, soldiers and civilians alike. Bonus points for being one of the few films to deal with the time period of the French and Indian wars.
Attack by the Humungus’ gang on gasoline tanker, The Road Warrior; perhaps the most spectacular car chase ever filmed, the sequence really can be considered a highly inventive, gripping, I’ll go so far as to say bone-crunching, 20-minute assault on a mobile fortress.
A couple of ‘worsts’:
Tank assault, Battle of the Bulge; bad in just about every way it could be, a force of Korean-era US-made tanks with German crosses painted on them, in terrain nothing like the area where the Battle of the Bulge was fought, are defeated by a handful of US soldiers rolling flaming drums of fuel down on them from a hill, in a skirmish that apparently never actually occurred.
Battle for the Bridge, The Good, the Bad and The Ugly; as much as I love this film (and it’s one of my all time favorites), the huge Civil War battle about two-thirds of the way in is simply ludicrous. Yes, it’s spectacularly staged, and I understand that the director wanted to put forward an anti-war message as a subtext in the film, but there just weren’t any major Civil War battles in the desert Southwest, and that ruins the whole thing for me. Plus the blowing up of the bridge that climaxes the sequence is poorly staged. So sue me.
Not like I’m a fan of Ewoks or anything, but a 4 foot tall living teddy bear is not a “teddy bear” - it’s a BEAR! Bears fuck people up! And there were thousands of them with rocks and spears in the jungles of Endor that day.
Not to mention that the battle in space raging above is still one of the best space battles ever (realistic or not).
I would include the following battles in the list:
A Bridge Too Far - Operation: Market Garden
300 - Battle of Thermopylae
Black Hawk Doen - Battle of Mogadishu
Full Metal Jacket - Battle of Hue City
The Empire Strikes Back - Battle of Hoth
Platoon - unnamed night battle
Last of the Mohicans - Seige of Fort William Henry
Glory - Storming of Fort Wagner
In regards to LOTR, while spectacular, I don’t think I would put them up there with the best. Too much comic relief with Gimli and Legolas counting kills (which really wouldn’t be funny if they were fighting say, Viet Kong or Germans) and too much skateboarding and acrobatics by Legolas. The Rohirrum charge was one of the best scenes ever though.
I would also give a thumbs up to Pearl Harbor - Attack on Pearl Harbor
Worst:
Any battle from Starship Troopers, I liked the movie for it’s stupid campiness, but the battle tactics and strategies made absolutely no sense.
Any battle from Star Wars Episodes I - III. Clones vs Robots - there’s no love lost between these armies of emotionless automaton. No use of cover or conceilmen, but what does it matter since no one can shoot straight. Basically all the battles were shot so as to have as many potential Hasbro toys on screen as possible.
Windtalkers - After the gritty realism of Saving Private Ryan, the hokey fireball explosions with screaming soldiers doing flips in the air looked like something out of the A-Team.
Battle of the Bulge - Too many historical absurdities, not the least of which is sweeping tank battles across open plains in the bright sunshine.
Not like I’m a fan of Ewoks or anything, but a 4 foot tall living teddy bear is not a “teddy bear” - it’s a BEAR! Bears fuck people up! And there were thousands of them with rocks and spears in the jungles of Endor that day.
Not to mention that the battle in space raging above is still one of the best space battles ever (realistic or not).
I would include the following battles in the list:
A Bridge Too Far - Operation: Market Garden
300 - Battle of Thermopylae
Black Hawk Doen - Battle of Mogadishu
Full Metal Jacket - Battle of Hue City
The Empire Strikes Back - Battle of Hoth
Platoon - unnamed night battle
Last of the Mohicans - Seige of Fort William Henry
Glory - Storming of Fort Wagner
In regards to LOTR, while spectacular, I don’t think I would put them up there with the best. Too much comic relief with Gimli and Legolas counting kills (which really wouldn’t be funny if they were fighting say, Viet Kong or Germans) and too much skateboarding and acrobatics by Legolas. The Rohirrum charge was one of the best scenes ever though.
I would also give a thumbs up to Pearl Harbor - Attack on Pearl Harbor
Worst:
Any battle from Starship Troopers, I liked the movie for it’s stupid campiness, but the battle tactics and strategies made absolutely no sense.
Any battle from Star Wars Episodes I - III. Clones vs Robots - there’s no love lost between these armies of emotionless automaton. No use of cover or conceilmen, but what does it matter since no one can shoot straight. Basically all the battles were shot so as to have as many potential Hasbro toys on screen as possible.
Windtalkers - After the gritty realism of Saving Private Ryan, the hokey fireball explosions with screaming soldiers doing flips in the air looked like something out of the A-Team.
Battle of the Bulge - Too many historical absurdities, not the least of which is sweeping tank battles across open plains in the bright sunshine.
I seem to remember “Cross of Iron” with James Coburn as having relatively good battle scenes, but I haven’t seen it in years.
Anyone seen it more recently than 10 or so years, and can comment?
I weep that the masterpiece that is The Battle of Algiers has apparently been lost to memory.
For frak’s sake, the U.S. military used it as a training tool for their current desert adventure. It’s as close to fly-on-the-wall of actual history as it’s possible for a fiction film to achieve.
No, it doesn’t have scenes of massive armies sloshing against one another across the landscape. It is small, brutal, and agonizing in its portrayal of urbanized conflict, and it is absolutely prescient in redefining what a battle really is in modern warfare. The title is a hint: the whole movie is a battle, beginning to end.
Possibly the best war film ever made.
Alright, I’m sold. I’ve added it to my Netflix queue.
At number 246.
I should receive it sometime around 2009.
The climactic battle scene in **Gallipoli **should have made the list.
Bump it up. You will thank me later.
And delay Anchorman?!
A few comments–
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You want to complain about the actual Endor part of the Battle of Endor? Whatever, fine. However, to not at least acknowledge the fact that the Battle of Endor (at least I would argue) also includes the Luke-Vader-Emperor duel on the Death Star seems a bit unfair. I agree with those who maintain that possibly the greatest tragedy of the OT is that the carping over the Ewoks always draws attention away from what is, IMO, genuinely one of the best sequences in the ST films.
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I’m not sure what I think about their Battle of Pelennor comments (OK, I do know that I think the ‘why didn’t they arrive sooner’ comment is idiocy defined, but…). In my opinion, the real problem with this sequence is something that they praise–the Eowyn/Witch-King confrontation. It just burns me that, deep in my heart, no matter how much I love PJ and these films (and I do), I know that the frickin’ Rankin-Bass cartoon–which is generally pretty terrible–captured the confrontation better because it stuck mostly to Tolkien’s language and most importantly did not cut the scene in two.
The Battle of Naboo is an affront to all that SW stands for…on this, I think we can agree. 