The Best War Movies Ever Made

War has been around since the dawn of humankind, so it's no surprise war movies have been around since the movie business began. The commercial film industry was still in its cradle when the U.S. declared war against Spain in 1898. The novelty of recording battles using motion pictures changed war coverage and cinematic storytelling all at once. No longer were outside observers limited to the printed page or static pictures to find out about war — now they could actually see the carnage from the comfort of a darkened movie theater. 

War's impact on documentaries was immediate, but soon filmmakers didn't just want to record war; they wanted to recreate it. D.W. Griffith's The Fugitive, about the American Civil War, came out in 1910, and was followed in 1915 by Griffith's Civil War-set The Birth of a Nation. War has been a part of cinema ever since. The films on this list reflect the sensibilities of their filmmakers, the times they were made, and the wars they feature. Some are critical of war's deteriorating effects on a person's soul, while others champion the triumph of the human spirit, which ironically shines brightest when locked in the crucible of combat. What are these films, and what do they tell us about the ancient institution of war and about ourselves? Here are the best war movies ever made.

Christopher Nolan is one of modern cinema's most celebrated auteurs. After achieving success with in the superhero genre (the Dark Knight trilogy), space epic (Interstellar), and high-concept sci-fi (Inception), Nolan set his sights on one of his biggest challenges. 

The Battle of Dunkirk is interesting as the British lost the battle, but inspired the world and saved the war with their successful evacuation of 338,000 troops from the coast of France. What made Dunkirk riskier than Nolan's other films was it had no headline star and the story has largely been forgotten, especially in America (unlike, say, Pearl Harbor). There was also Nolan's unconventional storytelling approach of breaking the narrative into one week, one day and one hour time blocks. Despite this, Warner Bros. had so much confidence in Nolan they gave him $100 million to film his passion project and released it during the summer, a competitive season known for superheroes and franchise epics, not dramatic war movies. The studio knew the draw for this movie was the audience's trust in Nolan and the World War II setting. 

True to form, Nolan didn't disappoint. Dunkirk earned a phenomenal Tomatometer score and opened with $50 million, legging it out (in typical Nolan fashion) to $189 million in the U.S. and $526 million worldwide. As an added bonus, Nolan's fellow filmmaker Quentin Tarantino ranked Dunkirk as one of his favorite films of the decade.

The Thin Red Line came out the same year as Saving Private Ryan, but is a very different World War II film. Directed by Terrence Malick, The Thin Red Line is a slow-paced, meditative, and philosophical look at war in general, and World War II in particular. True to Malick's form, there is little-to-no plot in The Thin Red Line, and the action of the conflict frequently takes a backseat to winding, dreamlike detours, which only manages to punctuate the surrounding nightmare. This is a film that takes time to focus on caterpillars crawling on twigs, showing how God's non-human creation is completely oblivious to the carnage that surrounds it, and where the most tragic, heart-rending death scene isn't some heroic sacrifice, but a soldier accidentally pulling the pin on his own grenade while it's still on his belt. Despite an all-star cast that included Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney, Adrien Brody, and John Cusack, The Thin Red Line only mustered $36 million domestically, or a little less than what Saving Private Ryan made in one weekend. Critics gave it a respectable Tomatometer score, but that isn't a true representation of just how great The Thin Red Line is.

Before he courted controversy as the writer of Scarface and the director of JFK and Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone was a Yale dropout, failed novelist, and directionless baby boomer trying to find his place in the world during the 1960s. Stone's journey took him to the U.S. Army and ultimately to the jungles of Vietnam. Stone said he joined because he "thought war was it; it was the most difficult thing a young man could go through... It was a rite of passage." He was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service, but left the military more directionless than he went in. He used his GI Bill to study at New York University under Martin Scorsese, and broke into Hollywood soon after as a screenwriter. It wasn't until 1986 that Stone committed his combat experience to celluloid with Platoon. 

Platoon is about a young soldier (played by Charlie Sheen, son of Martin Sheen, who played Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now seven years earlier), who must confront not only the Viet Cong, but the moral corruption of the sadistic Sgt. Barnes, played by Tom Berenger. It's a no-holds-barred, harrowing war film that was inspired by Stone's own personal experience. Critics gave it an impressive 88% Tomatometer score, it earned an incredible $138 million domestic on a $6 million budget, and took home Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for Oliver Stone.

The Hurt Locker is less a "war movie" and more a suspense film that wears your nerves raw over its 131-minute runtime. "The Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock famously defined suspense in his "Bomb Theory," in which he describes a scene where the audience knows a bomb is about to go off, but the characters don't. Director Kathryn Bigelow clearly took this lesson to heart in her story about an army bomb squad unit during the Iraq War. 

Bigelow cut her teeth on action-packed pics like Point Break and brings that same approach to The Hurt Locker, which stands head and shoulders above all other movies about the Iraq War. Unlike other films that came out in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, The Hurt Locker doesn't preach or condemn. Instead, it just tells a simple human story using powerful action filmmaking techniques, with superb performances and direction along the way, to create a visceral, harrowing experience from start to finish. Consequently, it's all the more effective. Critics were impressed too, bestowing The Hurt Locker with an incredible 97% Tomatometer score. More impressively, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar, and to direct the Academy Award winner for Best Picture.

The Big Red One doesn't get a lot of attention, but with a 90% Tomatometer score it truly is one of the great war movies. The Big Red One is set during World War II, but came out in 1980, when much of the cinematic conversation was still focused on Vietnam. As such it gets lost in the shuffle. In the film, real-life Marine and World War II veteran Lee Marvin (who won a Purple Heart fighting in the Pacific) plays a battle-hardened sergeant who leads his unit in the First Infantry Division from Africa to Europe. It's a simple, perhaps even cliche setup that is elevated to greatness by its performances (including one from a post-Star Wars: A New Hope Mark Hamill), and its direction at the hands of journeyman Samuel Fuller. 

The Big Red One is neither a "war is hell" narrative nor a propaganda picture straight out of Hollywood's Golden Age. Rather it's a simple, honest depiction of brave, ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, who rise to the occasion only thanks to the unity of their brotherhood. In many ways The Big Red One was ahead of its time, and set the stage for later films like Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk as well as TV shows like Band of Brothers and The Pacific. The film owes its true-to-life depiction to Samuel Fuller's narrative gifts and especially his personal experience fighting in North Africa during World War II. 

Despite being one of the most consequential conflicts in American history, the American Civil War's big-screen bona fides are spotty. While the Civil War-set The Birth of a Nation changed the face of cinema, its overtly racist story makes it difficult to classify as "great." Other great Civil War films are either set during the war, but not about it (a la Gone With The Wind, whose romanticizing of the slave-owning south is also problematic), or are historical biopics (like Lincoln). Besides Ken Burns' masterful The Civil War documentary, the best of the bunch is Glory. 

Glory tells the story of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who leads the first all-black volunteer company during the Civil War. Besides its stirring, inspiring portrayal of heroism, the film also shows that African-Americans were not only victims of Confederate slavery, but also from racism within their own ranks in the Union Army. Though the visual of Ferris Bueller commanding an Army unit is initially jarring, Matthew Broderick gives a career-best performance as Col. Shaw. That said, Glory belongs to Denzel Washington. His performance as the troubled former slave Pvt. Trip won him his first Oscar. Alas, Glory was not even nominated for Best Picture, which went to Driving Miss Daisy, though it does carry an impressive 93% Tomatometer score.

Stanley Kubrick's filmography includes remarkably diverse films, many of which are the best in their respective genres: 2001: A Space Odyssey (sci-fi), The Shining (horror), Dr. Strangelove (comedy), A Clockwork Orange (not even sure what genre this falls into), to name a few. With a lineup of this caliber, it's not surprising that less attention has been paid to one of the greatest war films, Kubrick's 1957 opus Paths of Glory. Kirk Douglas plays a commanding officer who must defend his soldiers from a general's accusations of cowardice after they refuse to attack an enemy's position. If that setup sounds dry or boring, the film is anything but. Within its tight 86-minute runtime, it is in part a prosaic, thoughtful meditation on courage and justice in times of combat, as well as a visceral, knockout war film, with protracted, single-shot camera work that predates 1917's one-shot setup by 60 years. With a 95% Tomatometer rating, Paths of Glory is truly a hidden gem not only in Stanley Kubrick's career, but in the war genre overall.

Set during World War I, The Grand Illusion follows two French soldiers who attempt to escape a German P.O.W. camp. In addition to being a classic in its own right, The Grand Illusion is also famous for inspiring two future classic movies as well: the digging of the escape tunnel from this film is recreated in The Great Escape, while the famous scene of Germans getting enraged at the singing of the "Marseilles" from Casablanca was first seen in The Grand Illusion. But as Roger Ebert put it in his four star review, "If Grand Illusion had been merely a source of later inspiration, it wouldn't be on so many lists of great films." 

The Grand Illusion isn't merely one of the greatest war films; it's one of the greatest films ever, period. In the most recent Sight and Sound poll of critics and filmmakers, published by BFI every 10 years and most recently in 2012, critics ranked The Grand Illusion as the 73rd Best Film Ever, while directors were even more generous, ranking it number 59. With a 97% Tomatometer rating, we expect The Grand Illusion's reign as one of the greatest war movies ever made will continue for generations to come.