Top 10 Best War Movies

Elem Klimov's Soviet film about a Belarusian teenager surviving Nazi atrocities is the most harrowing war film ever made. Its protagonist ages visibly before the camera, and its unflinching depictions of genocide make Saving Private Ryan look like a recruitment video by comparison.

Steven Spielberg's D-Day opus transformed war filmmaking with its visceral, handheld Omaha Beach sequence that left veterans in theaters weeping and trembling. Tom Hanks anchors a film that forced Hollywood to treat combat with documentary-level realism.

Stanley Kubrick's antiwar masterpiece about French officers executing their own soldiers for cowardice during World War I was banned in France for eighteen years. Kirk Douglas's righteous fury against military bureaucracy remains the genre's most powerful indictment of command.

Terrence Malick's Guadalcanal poem was released the same year as Saving Private Ryan and offered a radically different vision of war as existential meditation. Its all-star cast and whispered voiceovers created a contemplative counterpoint to Spielberg's visceral approach.

Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam film is essentially two movies: a devastating Parris Island boot camp section dominated by R. Lee Ermey's drill sergeant, and a disorienting Hue City combat sequence. The first half alone would rank among the greatest war films ever made.

Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins staged an entire World War I mission as a single continuous shot, creating an unprecedented real-time immersion in trench warfare. George MacKay's desperate sprint across no man's land is one of the most viscerally intense sequences in modern cinema.

Wolfgang Petersen's German submarine thriller made audiences empathize with a U-boat crew fighting for the Third Reich through sheer claustrophobic intensity and humanistic storytelling. Its depth charge sequences remain the most tension-inducing scenes in naval warfare cinema.

Gillo Pontecorvo's Italian-Algerian co-production about the Algerian independence struggle was so realistic that the Pentagon screened it as a counter-insurgency training film. Shot in documentary style with non-professional actors, it blurs the line between cinema and history.

Isao Takahata's Studio Ghibli animated film about two Japanese siblings starving in the aftermath of the Kobe firebombing is the most emotionally devastating war film regardless of medium. Roger Ebert called it one of the greatest war films ever made, animated or otherwise.

Elem Klimov's Soviet film about a Belarusian teenager surviving Nazi atrocities is the most harrowing war film ever made. Its protagonist ages visibly before the camera, and its unflinching depictions of genocide make Saving Private Ryan look like a recruitment video by comparison.

Steven Spielberg's D-Day opus transformed war filmmaking with its visceral, handheld Omaha Beach sequence that left veterans in theaters weeping and trembling. Tom Hanks anchors a film that forced Hollywood to treat combat with documentary-level realism.

Stanley Kubrick's antiwar masterpiece about French officers executing their own soldiers for cowardice during World War I was banned in France for eighteen years. Kirk Douglas's righteous fury against military bureaucracy remains the genre's most powerful indictment of command.

Terrence Malick's Guadalcanal poem was released the same year as Saving Private Ryan and offered a radically different vision of war as existential meditation. Its all-star cast and whispered voiceovers created a contemplative counterpoint to Spielberg's visceral approach.

Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam film is essentially two movies: a devastating Parris Island boot camp section dominated by R. Lee Ermey's drill sergeant, and a disorienting Hue City combat sequence. The first half alone would rank among the greatest war films ever made.

Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins staged an entire World War I mission as a single continuous shot, creating an unprecedented real-time immersion in trench warfare. George MacKay's desperate sprint across no man's land is one of the most viscerally intense sequences in modern cinema.

Wolfgang Petersen's German submarine thriller made audiences empathize with a U-boat crew fighting for the Third Reich through sheer claustrophobic intensity and humanistic storytelling. Its depth charge sequences remain the most tension-inducing scenes in naval warfare cinema.

Gillo Pontecorvo's Italian-Algerian co-production about the Algerian independence struggle was so realistic that the Pentagon screened it as a counter-insurgency training film. Shot in documentary style with non-professional actors, it blurs the line between cinema and history.

Isao Takahata's Studio Ghibli animated film about two Japanese siblings starving in the aftermath of the Kobe firebombing is the most emotionally devastating war film regardless of medium. Roger Ebert called it one of the greatest war films ever made, animated or otherwise.