The 30 Best War Movies of All Time
The 30 Best War Movies of All Time
In real life, war may not be good for much, but in movies it is good for everything: suspense, character evolution, visual effects, catharsis. No crucible is better suited for testing our heroes, forging our villains, and reminding us, sitting in a comfy movie theater with a sweater and a cup of Starbucks we smuggled in, that life isn't so bad.
Of course, the best war movies don’t really have heroes and villains, and as we rank what we think are the best the genre has to offer, we’re giving ourselves some rules. First, war has to be, like, the main thing. These are not so much movies featuring warfare as films where warfare is its own character, its own force that acts on and motivates other characters and narrative events. And as much as we’d love to give a nod to films like Children of Men and the stupid but subversive Starship Troopers—both of which have lots to say about human conflict through their fiction—we’re giving ourselves another hard and fast rule: no fictional or fantastical conflict. We’re sticking to films depicting historical warfare.But we’re also going to look in less conventional places for these films—and steer clear of pumping this list full of WWII entries. “Where are Patton and The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai?” cry dads everywhere. Not on this list. Sorry. Go find another list. (We have a separate list of the best WWII movies, which, yes, include Patton and The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai.)
Enough of these battle parameters, let’s dive in.
These are the best war films of all time
18) Transit (2018)
Transit is sort of a weird movie. Filmed in present day Paris, the film’s storyline is lifted directly from the Second World War, as refugees fleeing Nazi occupation must find passage to America. Except it’s modern Paris—with cell phones and internet. The discrepancy takes the conflict out of time and creates an uncanniness which reframes not just WWII, but also present conflict and migration.
17) Jarhead (2005)
Based on the book by Anthony Swafford, Jarhead features less outright conflict—bombings, firefights, typical war movie stuff—than everything in between. Waiting for orders. Training. Marching. It’s a boiling pot of a movie that increases tension without any releasee, which is maybe worse than actually taking fire.
16) Fury (2014)
In the same boiling pot category of constant tension: Fury. While the film’s final act is a bit comic superhero, it’s first two-thirds offer some of the most intense, claustrophobic battle sequences of any film on this list. And lots of very very intense dialogue.
15) 1917 (2019)
Director Sam Mendes took everything he learned filming Jarhead and dialed it up to a trench whistle. Filmed to look like a single unbroken take, the movie accomplishes maybe the opposite of Fury: instead of cramped fighting, the cinematography offers up an entire horizon—but with no safe edge.
14) Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Why is SPR so high on this list? Mostly because—the technical and practical achievements aside—the film abounds with cliché. It’s not a popular position, but we think the film strikes more jingoistic notes than it does nuance these days. That said, Steven Spielberg’s direction totally changed the way cinema approaches warfare, and perhaps no other film has been able to capture better (what we assume to be) the frenetic violence of combat.
13) The Pianist (2002)
Based on the memoire by pianist, composer, and Holocaust survivor, W?adys?aw Szpilman, The Pianist avoids some of the cliches of the previous entry—focusing less on binary battle and more on the fog of war and the people who suffer most.
12) The King (2019)
Since we can’t put a television episode here—we were thinking of Game of Thrones and their “Battle of the Bastards” episode, which featured some of the most intense open field sword fighting we’ve ever seen on screen—we’re going with The King. An amalgamation of Shakespeare’s histories, The King offers up the same slippery, muddy, totally-sloppy-looking melee that probably characterized medieval warfare.
11) The Hurt Locker (2008)
There’s obviously no shortage of suspense in a film that centers on an ordinance disposal team, but we like The Hurt Locker best for its quieter moments—when the soldiers return. There’s a moment in a grocery store isle that we think ranks as one of the most powerful scenes of anything on this list.
10) Beasts of No Nation (2015)
The film follows a child soldier forced to fight in his country’s civil war. The country is unspecified, leaving the viewer with little context. But context is unnecessary. The film’s impressionistic style wants viewers instead to feel its circumstances, which makes for one of the most impactful war movies put to screen.
9) War Witch (2012)
A similar nightmare to Beasts of No Nation is 2012’s War Witch. The film, however, takes a different route through civil war carnage—with a female protagonist who is believed to have clairvoyance—and hits the viewer maybe even harder.
8) The Breadwinner (2017)
Animation might not be the medium one expects to find films in this genre, and yet it’s produced some of the best. (We’ve even put one in the top 3.) Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis are both incredible adult animations focused on conflict. The Breadwinner, set in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, is also a must watch.
7) Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
Filmed as a companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers—depicting the American perspective of the fighting on Iwo Jima during the Second World War—Letters From Iwo Jima accomplishes a kind of 180 that few American WWII movies have even attempted: having us sympathize with our own countrymen and then immediately complicating our assumptions about the “enemy.” Conflicts those other movies make appear binary are here anything but.
6) Das Boot (1981)
5) Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
4) Schindler’s List (1993)
3) Dunkirk (2017)
2) Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
1) Come and See (1985)
From Saving Private Ryan and its sobering depiction of WWII to Hero and its epic Chinese Warring States retelling, these are the best war movies of all time.