15. “Das Boot” (1981)
The sweat. The claustrophobia. The literal pressure bearing in from all sides. There has simply never been a more visceral filmic description of the horrors of submarine warfare than Wolfgang Petersen‘s “Das Boot.” Set in a Berman U-boat during WWII, with Jurgen Prochnow’s hard-jawed Captain as the head of a young crew more or less (and mostly less) personally loyal to their cause and their Fuhrer, it’s also a taut sociological experiment as days go by without relief from the monotony and cabin fever sets in, only for frayed nerves and mettle to be tested in brief bursts of devastating combat. Originally a six-hour miniseries, whether you see the original theatrical cut or the extended one, the airless miracle is that such a closed-quarters movie can feel dynamic: Jost Vacano‘s cinematography is so clever at moving nervily through this cramped space with its hatches and tight turnarounds, that by the time it ends, every muscle aches.
14. “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962)
The only reason David Lean’s enthralling all-time classic isn’t higher on this list is that it’s so many other things aside from a war movie; it really amounts to a one-film treatise of the “Great Man” theory of history. Starring an astounding, piercingly blue-eyed Peter O’Toole as TE Lawrence, and the glitteringly dark-eyed Omar Sharif as his friend and counsel Sherif Ali, the film’s most famous moment might be Ali’s long ride up to the well, but the setting on the Arabian Peninsula during WWI provides plenty of superlative battle scenes too. From the train attack, to the morally indefensible slaughter of retreating troops, to the incredible descent on Aqaba, in which hordes of horsemen (and camelmen) overrun the bayside town in a matter of minutes, there is no doubt that “Lawrence of Arabia” unequivocally glorifies warfare as the crucible in which manhood is forged, even as it shows its cost, in human life and moral abnegation.
13. “Paisan” (1946)
The 6 vignettes in Roberto Rosselini‘s neo-realist classic “Paisan” were shot on location at the very tail end of the war, so they feel immediate, without any sense of retrospectivity intruding. They differ in tone — part 1 is a tragedy as a fledging love affair between a village girl and an American soldier is curtailed; part 2 a seriocomic caper as a young boy steals a black GI’s shoes; part 3 a cynical anti-romance in which a drunken soldier fails to recognize the young girl he’s been pining for in the prostitute she’s become; part 4 an American nurse’s desperate race through occupied territory to find her painter-turned-partisan-leader lover; part 5 a religious interlude as three American chaplain spend the night in a Catholic monastery; and part 6 a stirring tale of life and death in a partisan brigade. But chorally they are a brilliantly heartfelt experience of the messiness and communication failures of the waning days of war.
12. “The Deer Hunter” (1978)
There are few films that set out with ambitions as grandiose as those of Michael Cimino’s elegy to the Vietnam War, but “The Deer Hunter,” which sets itself the task of indicting an entire generational ethos, as well as an incredibly controversial and unpopular war and its debilitating aftermath, comes very close to achieving them all. Modulated away from pomposity by a restrained Robert De Niro, whose quiet watchfulness contrasts with his Oscar-winning co-star Christopher Walken‘s tragic, increasingly unhinged performance, and those of John Savage, John Cazale and Meryl Streep, in her small but indelible debut, it won 9 Academy Awards and set up Cimino for the spectacular blaze-out that was “Heaven’s Gate.” But its most lasting legacy is in influencing how the Vietnam War is thought of to this day: certain tropes, like Russian Roulette, or the maimed vet finding it impossible to adjust, have become almost cliched since, because they were achieved here with such unforgettable clarity.
11.” Fires On The Plain” (1959)
It may seem incongruous that the director of one of the most powerfully bleak films about war’s corruption of basic humanity was also a director of comedies and at one time earned the nickname “the Japanese Capra.” But Kon Ichikawa‘s stunning “Fires on the Plain,” aside from being as desolate a picture of the horror of war as you will find, is also rife with witty observational asides, such as the sequence involving a series of soldiers trading up to the pair of boots abandoned by the last guy. And it unfolds with the kind of timing usually reserved for a perfect longform joke, only here the punchline is grimmer than you can imagine. Starring Eiji Funakoshi as Tamura, a tubercular private in a Japanese army on the brink of abject defeat, it’s a kind of Russian-nesting-doll narrative of death, as the sickly soldier criss-crosses these plains encountering humiliation, cannibalism and moral exhaustion in paradoxically beautiful images of destruction and disillusion.
Where’s Enemy at the Gates?
“There might have been some better war movies (21, by our count)…” well your count is shit. its 20 y’idiot.
Thank you for so graciously pointing out this small error. It has been fixed.
Great list. Perfect choice for the number one spot.
The most obvious ommission (and it’s a towering ommission), is City of Life and Death, which I would easily put in the top five.
No Man’s Land is a great war movie that’s all about the characters, lots of tension and no action scenes. I love it.
This is a very good list overall.
I reckon Tobias Lindholm’s “A War” deserves a mention.
Your top 3 are pretty impeccable (though I would place them in a different order). Das Boot and Full Metal Jacket deserve higher spots, however.
As usual this list is ok-ish. But the order doesn’t make much sense. ‘Army of Shadows’ gets across the reality of war more than the ok-ish way over-rated ‘Apocalypse Now’. When it comes to war portraying the horrific nightmarish chaos is very very important. War is no joke. It’s a crime that usually happens because powerful people want resources. ‘The Burmese Harp’ is better than anything on this list. Or the tunnel scene in Kurosawa’s ‘Dreams’. Rossellini’s ‘Germany,Year Zero’ is also very under-appreciated. Dovzhenko’s ‘Arsenal’ and Eisenstein ‘Alexander Nevsky’ and ‘Ugetsu’ and ‘Lotna’ also. And John Ford’s war-related ‘The Long Voyage Home’ is wonderful. Godard’s ‘Les Carabiniers’ sums up war better than almost all of these films. And Jansco’s ‘The Round-Up’ will not inspire you to take up arms, thank God.
Sadly no polish movies here… 🙁 Where’s “Canal”?
‘The Thin Red Line’ will never be topped. A masterpiece. Good list overall.
“Catch-22” … ??? Not being on a top 25 is just “insanity”.
Altman’s “M*A*S*H” is a major oversight as well. While you state you’d like to reference wars through time and geography, this list is almost exclusively WWII or Vietnam War films… and there have been A LOT OF WARS over the years… “M*A*S*H” at least would have covered The Korean War. And what about the American Civil War? Keaton’s “The General”, or “Birth of A Nation” or “Cold Mountain” !?!?!? (my choice for that war)…
While I love “Empire of The Sun”, you introduce your ‘not including’ list, then start off with what is essentially a POW film (as is “Bridge on The River Kwai”), so these two should have been dropped for the above two (which unbelievably, weren’t even mentioned in the 45 HONOURABLE MENTIONS !!)
I was expecting “Patton” to be there, and surprised (though not necessarily in disagreement with) it didn’t make the cut, considering its accolades.
And while “Dunkirk” is admittedly too new to include on the list, surely “Hacksaw Ridge” should have been in consideration, no? “Master and Commander” … ??? Really? Over such as the films I’ve mentioned? Ugh… I agree wholeheartedly on some of the films and their rankings, others make me wonder about your objectivity when creating this list, and the confusion between what was supposed to be left of the list and what got included. Finally, “Thin Red Line” is an arguably great choice for #1, but “L.O. Arabia” had to be rated much higher, being one of the greatest films of ANY genre, period.
GUYS!? How could you not include Casualites of War?! Consideration only?
“Taegeukgi” should also be mentioned…
People ought to take a look at an obscure film called The War Lover (1962) directed by Philip Leacock. It featured Steve McQueen playing bomber pilot, Buzz Rickson, who revels in the war’s destruction. At some point, after he pull an impulsive stunt, he is evaluated by other officers, and the psych officer thinks he’s “borderline psychopath.” But the war has use for such men as long they are functional
However, I think it is Steve McQueen pre-channeling Donald Trump as sociopath if Trump had the courage to go to war. A good print has been released on YouTube.
Rickson exhibits the same antisocial traits as Trump: lack of empathy or remorse, bold and recklessness, being disinhibited, impulsive, egotistical, etc. He has contempt for some of crew members (he lies to get one thrown off and crew member dies on another plane) and superior officers. He’s not above egging on a crew member in foisting himself on a chunky pub waitress. Rickson nearly sexually assaults his co-pilot’s English “war girl.” Lt. Boland (played by Robert Wagner), the co-pilot has mixed feelings about Rickson; he knows he’s a good pilot but suspects that he’s a troubled man.
If you want to see how a sociopath like Trump would behaved if he actually had the courage to fight, watch the War Lover.
Spartacus. Kubrick was obsessed with war. Also, Pierre Schoendoerffer’s 317th Platoon. Schoendoerffer, like Oliver Stone, was also a soldier in the French Indochina war. Merrill’s Marauders. Objective Burma. Stalingrad. They Were Expendable. Attack! Probably dozens more that deserve mention.
The Train. I quite liked last year’s Land of Mine.
Thin Red Line is great choice for number one. One of my favorites soundtracks by Gavin Greenaway.
The cast, photography, script and soundtrack for Thin Red Line are darkly magnificent. Depicted the barbarity, complexity, detachment, ego and bravery of war. Mesmerizing imagery and sound.
Good list, although having Thin Red Line at #1 is mind bogglig to me, and not including Schindler’s List is just obscene, but whatever.
I will point out though that I was hoping against hope that you would have included possibly the greatest war film (and certainly most underrated of any kind of film) ever made – Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition. 9 hours long and it flies by, absolutely breathtaking and powerful and heartbreaking and certainly the most powerful anti-war statement you can imagine. Epic in scope but perfectly realized in the details, it’s everything you can want in a war film, really.
A shame it wasn’t mentioned here, since something like The Playlist is just about the only place I could expect to see it :$
A bridge too far should be included.
What was the reasoning behind putting the Hurt Locker on the List and omitting Ivan’s Childhood?