What are your favourite war/military movies

I am big fan of war movies. I tend to favour the more recent ones, because they have better quality sound and video.

My top 3 war/military movies are:

1. Band of Brothers
2. Black Hawk Down
3. The Unit

Other favourites

• Red Cliff 2
• Private Ryan
• The Pacific
• Centurion
• Master and Commander
• Green Zone
• U-571
• Letters from Iwo Jima
• Crimson Tide
• Last Samurai

Ones that I look forward to watching (soon I hope):
Act of Valor
Lebanon (2011) - This one is interesting, filmed alomost entirely from inside a tank.
Generation Kill
Over There
Seedig Bale

Das Boot

I haven't seen U-571 and wouldn't want to after seeing the epic classic above

Anon wrote:

1. Kelly's Heroes (first and best attempt to a military/robbery movie)

This...

A thousand times this, love that movie, amazing cast, good plot and donald sutherland is genious in it.. xD

I'd almost forgotten about it, it's been so long since it was last on TV.. thanks Anon, now i'm going to have to go watch it somehow!

Also Full metal is superb all round o_0 Love the drill sergent..

That is the thing with war films i.e. the gung-ho hollywood approach. Das Boot is probably the most realistic movie of war I've seen. You could see the captain eventually was just following orders because he was forced to. A very powerful film seen from from the other side.

Anon wrote:

The operation portrayed in the movie (stealing the Enigma from a German submarine) happpened, but it was a British Navy operation, not a U.S. Navy one

It wasn’t even a planed operation. The U-boat in question (U-110 ) was attacking a British convoy and was depth-charged by one of the escort ships. The sub surfaced and the crew abandoned ship without destroying the code books thinking that it was going to sink, but it remained afloat. A boarding party from HMS Bulldog found the books and sent them back to Bletchley Park.

The Highlander wrote: It wasn’t even a planed operation. The U-boat in question (U-110 ) was attacking a British convoy and was depth-charged by one of the escort ships. The sub surfaced and the crew abandoned ship without destroying the code books thinking that it was going to sink, but it remained afloat. A boarding party from HMS Bulldog found the books and sent them back to Bletchley Park.

I visited Bletchley Park about (oh shit) 17 years ago, when they were first opening it up as a museum / historical site. The guides had a ton of cool stories about special operations in support of the code-breaking effort. If you've read the Cryptonomicon, then you know the kind of thing I'm talking about. I think they've done a lot more work on the park since then, including reconstruction of Colossus. If you happen to be in that corner of England, and you're of a geeky frame of mind, then check it out.

Back on topic, I'm not a big fan of war movies, although they were always on TV at Christmas when I was a kid. My favorites would probably be a 'A Bridge Too Far' (although, I think it would have been better with my modifications ) and 'Ice Cold in Alex'.

I think you guys may have "missed the boat" on a couple of movies that were left off, but I will say that Das Boat in German with English sub titles was one of the best ever (and yes I saw it in English as well).

My all time favorite movie is The Great Escape. I have lost track how many times I have seen it, but that number is in double digits. It has what is most likely the greatest cast ever assembled for a movie in it.


Stalag 17 with one Oscar win and 4 nominations

The Bridge over the River Kwai (Winner of 7 Oscars)

I almost forgot another Oscar winner, 12 O'Clock High.

ace191 wrote: My all time favorite movie is The Great Escape. I have lost track how many times I have seen it, but that number is in double digits. It has what is most likely the greatest cast ever assembled for a movie in it.

"Steve McQueen / jumped the first one clean / but the great escape he tried to make was not to be / maybe next time, Steve..."

That's one of the movies I always ended up watching over Christmas as a kid. Talk about a feel-good movie that's a total bummer. A great cast that ends up getting shot in the back of the head or machine-gunned to death on barbed wire. Ah, good times.

Some of my favorites have already been named -- Paths of Glory, Kelly's Heroes, and everything on ace's list (except I haven't seen Twelve O'Clock High).

I'd add Lawrence of Arabia and Breaker Morant (which might be a little off-topic since it deals with a court-martial rather than combat, but it's a brilliant movie).

Cross of Iron
Stalingrad
Murphy's War
Restrepo
Gunner Palace
Taking Chance
Generation Kill
Three Kings

12 O' Clock High is not one of those feel good wipe out the bad guys pictures. It tells the story of the brutal beating that the B-17's of the Eight Air force took in 1943. At that time, the P-47's had high altitude ignition and cooling problems and limited range. They were powerful, well armed and armored fighters, very fast but with very limited range. The P-38 had several issues including problems with the new GE turbo-superchargers and because of that, they did not function well at high altitudes. The P-51 Mustang was pretty much a flop with its non supercharged Allison engine, thus the B-17's had to face ME 109's, FW 190's and radar guided German Flak on their own.

The title of the film comes from how the bomber crews would call out over the intercom the position of attacking fighters. The front of the plane was 12, the R wing 3, tail 6 and the left wing 9 O'clock. This could be 12, 12 low or 12 high. The head on diving attack was a German favorite, hence
the familar call out, incoming fighters, 12 O'Clock High!

Bomber crews were required to fly 25 missions before they could rotate home. They had about a 5 % chance of doing that without being shot down or killed. Losses were so high that support back in the states was dwindling and several folks wanted this practice stopped as it was viewed as a useless exercise that was just slaughtering our boys.

I am sure everyone knows the name of the first B-17 to make those 25 missions, as the Army Air Corp
had the Hollywood Film boys make a movie out of it. They also were filming two other planes just in case. After completing her 25 Missions, the Memphis Belle and her crew got to go home to do a tour around the US to drum up support for the war. This movie is more about all the guys who did not get to home.

I have met many, many B17 and B 24 pilots and crewmen in my lifetime, but all of them flew in 1944 and 1945 with long range Merlin powered P-51 Mustang air cover. I have never met a bomber pilot or crewman from 1943. Watching this movie will show you why that is.

It takes an incredible amount of guts to climb into a four engine bomber loaded with 4000 lbs of explosives and enough 145 octane avgas to start a really large fire. You are fending off the minus 40 to 60 degree temps, the 180 mile per hour wind while sucking oxygen through a mask all the while trying to stay warm and fend off attacking fighters with 50 cal machine guns and a very limited supply of ammo.

The next time you think you have it tough, rent this movie then re-think it. I am sure that there are a few guys like Sarge on this site that can relate, but most of us thankfully never will really be able to, myself included.

I tend to favor the classics. In alphabetical order, these movies would be at the top of my list:

Guns of Navarone, The
Kelly's Heroes
Longest Day, The

I'm kind of in two minds on this one.

On the one side I'd have the likes of The Great Escape, Kelly's Heroes, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare as my favourites.

On the other I'd have Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan and the Band of Brothers mini-series.

I guess one side prefers the grittier, darker, stark, bleak War movies and the other prefers the more ...uh.... lighter(?) "adventure" movies?