[Editor’s note: This list was originally published in June 2017. It has since been updated with new entries.]
Ron Perlman would have us believe that war never changes, but the movies about it certainly have. The last 20 years have brought no shortage of films about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (for obvious reasons), but the best war movies of the 21st century show that World War II continues to fascinate filmmakers most of all.
While those conflicts have dominated the genre lately, everything from the Civil War to the Battle of Red Cliffs has found powerful expression onscreen. Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” tells us that “war is a drug,” and the films below suggest that movies about war are just as addictive — maybe even more so. We hope this list provides your fix.
With contributions from Anne Thompson and Michael Nordine.
27. “1917” (2019)
Drawing inspiration from his own grandfather’s war stories, Sam Mendes made a war film that’s as nakedly sentimental and admiring toward the experiences of soldiers as that implies. That’s not a bad thing, though: his 2019 hit “1917” is a sturdy, well-built World War I story that immerses the audience into the chaos of a warzone. George McKay and Dean Charles-Chapman, both quite great, play the British corporals at the center, who are tasked with delivering a message across enemy lines to halt a planned attack that will result in the deaths of hundreds. While the film’s one-shot conceit, in which several long takes were edited together to look like one (well, two) continuous shots, can verge on the gimmicky, “1917” still has more than enough rousing spirit and astonishing setpieces to enjoy. —WC
26. “Da 5 Bloods” (2020)
Spike Lee’s latter career has had its highs and lows, but “Da 5 Bloods” isn’t just a high for its era of Lee: it’s one of the director’s best works, period. Starring the killer quartet of Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, and Isiah Whitlock Jr. as four Vietnam vets who journey back to the country as old men looking for a treasure they once left behind, it manages that classic Lee trick of feeling loose and pulsing with energy and fury all at once. As these men go on their quest, Lee uses their haunted experiences to consider the legacy of American imperialism and the complicated role that Black soldiers play in the U.S. war machine. Heavy and unsparing, “Da 5 Bloods” also benefits from a tremendous and searing central performance from Lindo, who embodies a MAGA Black man with a sharp, non-judgmental eye toward his subject’s virtues and many failings. —WC
25. “Jarhead” (2005)
There’s something in the way in this timely look at the Iraq War, which appeared endless even in 2005. Made when the fog of war was still thick, Sam Mendes’ drama provides clarity on a conflict that, more than a decade later, we’re still trying to make sense of. Jake Gyllenhaal, in one of his first serious roles following “Donnie Darko,” is a Marine struggling to understand not only what he’s doing on the other side of the world but why he’s there; answers are in short supply, but insight is not. Mendes’ post–“American Beauty,” pre-“Skyfall” phase tends to be thought of as his worst, but “Jarhead” deserves a closer look. —MN
24. “Black Hawk Down” (2001)
“Dunkirk” didn’t come out of the ether. Back in 2001, director Ridley Scott, with a script from writers Ken Nolan, Steve Gaghan, Steve Zaillian, and Mark Bowden adapting the author’s 1999 non-fiction bestseller, re-enacted the U.S. military’s disastrous 1993 raid in Mogadishu in horrifying, noisy, immersive close-up. Scott tracks the off-site commanders (including the late great Sam Shepard) who sent Special Operations soldiers into the city to capture two top warlord lieutenants. There, the soldiers were attacked by Somali militia RPGs, who felled two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters (plunging one man overboard), and damaged two others, which led to a rescue mission for survivors. A sturdy cast of veteran and rising stars are on the ground, in the air and watching with horror from afar: Eric Bana, Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Jason Isaacs, Orlando Bloom, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Jeremy Piven, and debuting Tom Hardy. “Black Hawk Down” won deserved Best Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars. —AT
23. “The Keeping Room” (2014)
Brainy actress Brit Marling stars in this Civil War drama that mixes a character study with the home invasion genre. A friend sent Marling a script from schoolteacher-turned-screenwriter Julia Hart and her producer husband Jordan Horowitz, which Marling instantly wanted to do, because “it’s a story of a woman who is strong in an inherently feminine way,” Marling told me. Rising UK director Daniel Barber took on this 1865 story about Augusta (Marling) running a farm with her younger sister (Hailee Steinfeld) and her house slave (Muna Otaru) while the men are away at war. Augusta knows how to use a gun for game and protection; the trio have reason to be wary of strangers, especially wayward soldiers. When Augusta rides to a store seeking medicine for a gash in her sister’s leg, she manages to escape on horseback from two threatening soldiers, but one (Sam Worthington) is not willing to let her go and tracks her down. It’s in the kitchen hearth, the keeping room, that this fierce woman warrior makes her last stand. —AT
22. “Defiance” (2008)
Ed Zwick specializes in war dramas that are more nuanced than they’re usually given credit for — likely a result of the tension between his bleeding-heart sensibilities and his just-plain-bloody set pieces, which occasionally make him look more battle-hungry than he probably intends. Daniel Craig leads one of his best, a based-on-fact World War II story of four Jewish brothers who retreated into the woods of Belarus and brought any and all fellow survivors they could find with them as they eked out a humble (and, yes, defiant) existence among the trees. “Defiance” is alive with the energy of both its ruggedly beautiful setting and the individuals who live within it — not because they want to, but because they must. —MN
21. “Hacksaw Ridge” (2016)
Mel Gibson mounted a major comeback with his fifth feature, a viscerally powerful, emotionally satisfying action drama about the horrors of war. Not unlike Sam Peckinpah or Ken Russell, Gibson is a superb director who knows how to make things vivid and real, so much so that his most violent action scenes can be too intense for some viewers. Garfield is perfect casting for the earnest Boy Scout pacifist trying to escape a domineering father (Hugo Weaving) to join his brother in the Army to fight the Japanese in World War II. In boot camp, he is hazed and abused and put on trial for refusing to carry a weapon. On the horrific clifftop battlefield, he heroically rescues 75 men without ever lifting a gun. Garfield landed his first Oscar nomination among a total of six, including Best Picture and Gibson for Best Director. The movie took home two statuettes, for Best Editing and Sound Editing, and scored $158.7 million worldwide. —AT
20. “Allied” (2016)
We know what you’re thinking — if you haven’t seen “Allied,” you probably wrote it off a long time ago — but hear us out. Can a movie be a double agent? Is all really fair in love and war when both conflicts are happening at the same time? Such questions are at the heart of “Allied,” Robert Zemeckis’ old-fashioned espionage drama starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard as married spies who may or may not be fighting for the same team. Though light on the kind of effects the “Forrest Gump” and “Contact” director is usually known for, it’s rich in the sort of heartfelt moments that make Zemeckis’ best work sing. Whether Allied or Axis, the battle lines are always being redrawn — and there’s no guarantee that we’ll end up on the winning side. —MN
19. “U-571” (2000)
This utterly fictional World War II submarine actioner is another nailbiter that puts us at eye-level with the anxiety of war. In this case, the film pits a skeleton American submarine crew against the Nazis on the Atlantic front as they try to steal the German Command’s communication device Enigma. (The British were horrified by this version of their story.) Director Jonathan Mostow made his name reminding audiences that every submarine is a death-trap, ratcheting up the tension through the film’s pulse-pounding 116 minutes. Bill Paxton plays a tough and exacting commander who doesn’t think his young executive officer (Matthew McConaughey) is ready to take over his own ship. The movie shows how ready he turns out to be, with help from his canny Chief Petty Officer (Harvey Keitel). The Americans grab the Enigma from scuttled German unterseeboot U-571, only to look back and see their own torpedoed out of the water. Forced to reboard the leaky sub where everything is labeled in German, they dive for safety and await their fate as depth charges explode around them — one scene that won the movie the Sound Editing Oscar. —AT
18. “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005)
Secretly one of Ridley Scott’s best movies, “Kingdom of Heaven” is an epic of unusual thoughtfulness. Much of its poignancy is owed to a scene-stealing Edward Norton, hidden under a mask as the leper King Baldwin IV, whose soft speaking voice cuts through the din of battle. (Norton wanted his role to be uncredited, a wise request that was denied.) It turns out that much of what transpired during the Crusades wasn’t holy so much as horrible (who would have guessed?), and though Scott has always reveled in slick bloodshed he also infuses it with meaning and purpose here. Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, and even Orlando Bloom (in a rare non-pirate or -elf role) are worthy soldiers in that effort, and “Kingdom of Heaven” more than earns its conquest. —MN
17. “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017)
Amid all the superheroes and toys, one unlikely franchise has managed to distinguish itself these last several years. Much of the credit for the three “Apes” movies’ success falls on the simian shoulders of Andy Serkis, whose Caesar espouses the “ape not kill ape” philosophy while becoming ever more human himself — not that that’s always a good thing. This trilogy-concluding chapter takes things to their (un)natural conclusion: an all-out conflict in which sides must be chosen and a victor must be declared. To the victor go the spoils, which for those of us watching meant three movies that continually exceeded expectations. —MN
16. “American Sniper” (2014)
Veteran Clint Eastwood touched a nerve ($547 million worldwide) with this tense Iraq War portrait of late Texas sharpshooter Chris Kyle. Bradley Cooper bulked up, adding 35 pounds of muscle, to play the Navy SEAL who saved countless lives — and killed with pinpoint accuracy. While Eastwood aimed to explore the psychological impact of war on this complex real-life character, the movie drew fire from right and left alike. Does the film promote flag-flying jingoism or morally ambiguous, PTSD-sufferer sympathy? In any case “American Sniper” is riveting moviemaking, and secured six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and a win for Sound Editing. —AT
15. “Atonement” (2007)
This wartime romance, directed by Joe Wright and adapted by Christopher Hampton from the Ian McEwen novel, starts out as a bucolic summertime frolic as a little girl (Saoirse Ronan) runs through the grass, and a stunning woman (Keira Knightley) takes a half-clothed plunge into a cool fountain on a hot day. Wright makes us feel the loss of something that will never be again as the film’s stymied romance is played out against the backdrop of war. Knightley and James McAvoy, in his first full-on leading man role, are well-matched. The movie is about love and loss and disastrous mistakes on all fronts. And Wright’s complex five-minute tracking shot across an enormous military encampment after the retreat from Dunkirk is one of the most breathtaking single takes ever. The movie scored seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and won for Original Score. —AT
14. “Black Book” (2006)
For this taut World War II suspense thriller, Paul Verhoeven (“Total Recall,” “Basic Instinct”) returned to Holland, reunited with screenwriter Gerard Souteman to advance the work they did on “Soldier of Orange,” and took advantage of his considerable Hollywood moviemaking chops. His goal: to shine a light on Holland’s dark side during the war. His strong leading woman is a composite of several real war spies. Jewish singer Rachel (“Game of Thrones” star Carice van Houten) has lost everything in German-occupied Holland and joins the resistance. As usual, sex plays a role in this Verhoeven movie as Rachel willingly beds the Gestapo commander (Sebastian Koch), dying her pubic hair to match her blond locks — but falls in love. Nobody is happy. When the war ends, the Dutch go after suspected collaborators, including Rachel, who needs to figure out who really did what to whom in order to survive. Parallels to the war in Iraq were intentional. —AT
13. “Downfall” (2004)
Don’t let its status as the source of all those “Hitler reacts to ____” memes we all know and love distract you from the fact that “Downfall” is a bracing portrait of the 20th century’s most infamous monster in his last few days. Bruno Ganz — previously best known for playing an angel in “Wings of Desire” — goes decidedly unholy in portraying Hitler; it doesn’t inspire warm feelings for the the man who ruined Chaplin mustaches forever, but it does breed understanding. Neither his inner circle nor the audience escape unscathed either, as anyone familiar with the scene in which Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda force their six children to ingest cyanide before ending their own lives can attest. An Academy Award nominee in the Best Foreign-Language Film category, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film makes a disturbing companion to Alexander Sokurov’s “Moloch.” —MN
12. “Red Cliff” (2008)
Hong Kong auteur John Woo’s lush historic epic starring Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and a pan-Asian cast is exhilarating, eye-popping fun. It took five Asian countries to finance the original two-part $80-million five-hour war film (then the most expensive movie ever produced in China), which was a huge hit in Asia. But the two-and-a half-hour western cut was released stateside without much fanfare. One of the greatest action directors working today, Woo (“A Better Tomorrow,” “Hard Boiled,” “Mission: Impossible 2”) was aiming for cinematic grandeur in the mold of the sumptuous period war films of Akira Kurosawa, Ang Lee, or Zhang Yimou. Filmed for 13 months with eight months of post, “Red Cliff” is BIG: massive battles on foot and horseback, sea battles with flaming arrows and fleets of blazing ships, elegant sets and costumes, gorgeous landscapes, swooping, sophisticated digital FX shots, and thousands of extras, both real and digital. The Chinese government supplied 700 to 1,500 Army solders as needed to help build roads as well as act. And the VFX team delivered an expensive two-minute shot of a camera following Woo’s signature dove flying miles across rough terrain between two enemy camps. Woo kept four units running at once and used six cameras running at different speeds; he shot 2 million feet of film. —AT
11. “Phoenix” (2014)
A Holocaust story by way of “Vertigo” or “Eyes without a Face,” this moody Hitchcockian German post-World War II drama is directed by leading German auteur Christian Petzold. His longtime muse Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a disfigured concentration camp survivor who no longer looks like herself after facial reconstruction surgery. She returns to postwar Berlin to seek out the husband (Ronald Zehrfeld), who may have sold her out to the Nazis. He doesn’t recognize her, which allows her to investigate his possible betrayal in the guise of another woman. The movie concludes with one of the most devastating denouements of all time. —AT
10. “Son of Saul” (2015)
The two Holocaust experts behind this unique World War II foreign-language Oscar-winner, rookie Hungarian director László Nemes and poet Géza Röhrig, met in New York when Nemes was studying film directing at NYU. Röhrig made his feature debut as Saul, a Jewish prisoner-of-war at Auschwitz in 1944. Inspired by the book “Voices from Beneath the Ashes,” featuring eyewitness accounts by Sonderkommando who buried their testimonies, Nemes was able to ground his narrative (shot in 35 mm), in the authentic, tangible everyday functioning of what he calls a “death factory.” Nemes’ tightly-focused camera follows the Sonderkommando’s blinkered close-up point-of-view as he does the Nazis’ dirty work in the crematoria and moves through the camp seeking to bury a young boy. Who is he? The movie’s immersive action and intricately layered sound design, which reveal the hideous scale of the mass slaughter of Jews, is not soon forgotten. —AT
9. “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” (2003)
A Hollywood studio threw out the hit-formula playbook with $135-million Napoleonic war film “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” That’s because Twentieth Century Fox’s Tom Rothman bet on veteran Australian Peter Weir, who held out for what he wanted. He drew from two Patrick O’Brian books, insisted on Russell Crowe (in his prime) being available when he needed him, and demanded enough post-production time to make the computer-graphic effects look as real as possible, forcing the studio to give up a peak summer slot and release in November. And he retained control of the final cut. Finally, ”Master and Commander” throws out more Hollywood conventions than most megabudget spectaculars, from skipping a romance to chasing a shadowy French captain who is not turned into a standard villain. And the results were spectacular, yielding ten Oscar nominations including Director and Picture, and two wins for Cinematography and Sound Editing. The movie didn’t turn enough profit to generate a sequel, but it certainly deserved one. —AT
8. “City of Life and Death” (2009)
The Nanking Massacre is far from the most famous atrocity committed during World War II, but it is one of the most horrific. As many as 300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were killed by the Imperial Japanese Army, which plays out onscreen in much the way you’d expect it to: as a dizzying descent into the horrors of a war we’ve still yet to fully understand more than 70 years later. Which isn’t to say that there are no surprises in “City of Life and Death” — Lu Chuan, who most recently directed the considerably more lighthearted Disneynature documentary “Born in China,” offers moments of dignity and grace amid the brutality. —MN
7. “Letters from Iwo Jima” (2006)
Clint Eastwood’s two-film cycle on the Battle of Iwo Jima might be the most ambitious undertaking of his entire career: “Flags of Our Fathers” shows the American side of that tide-turning skirmish, with “Letters from Iwo Jima” depicting the Japanese perspective. Filmed back-to-back with its companion piece and released two months after it, “Letters” ranks among Eastwood’s finest work. A scene in which an entire group of Japanese soldiers are ordered to commit suicide via grenade and only one disobeys has long been the film’s most famous, but it’s when Eastwood slows the action down and allows us to absorb the quieter, more contemplative moments that his achievement comes into sharpest relief. —MN
6. “The Pianist” (2002)
Whither the Adrien Brody of yore? His Oscar celebration was a moment unto itself — hello, Halle Berry — but it’s his performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman in Roman Polanski’s intimate epic that reverberates loudest all these years later. It might be thought of as karmic recompense for the actor, who thought he was the lead in another World War II drama (Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line”) until attending the premiere and realizing his role had been drastically reduced; not so here, where Brody leads almost every heartbreaking scene. Polanski wasn’t on hand to accept his own Oscar for obvious (and deserved) reasons, but his work as maestro has rarely been more worthy of applause. —MN
5. “Inglourious Basterds” (2009)
“I think this just might be my masterpiece.” So says Brad Pitt’s nat-see killing Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino’s alternate-history take on World War II, which introduced the world at large to Christoph Waltz and showed us that, in this one-of-a-kind auteur’s world, movies are so powerful that they can literally kill Hitler. There’s something endearing about that even if you can’t abide by the graphic violence and quest for vengeance that fuels “Inglourious Basterds,” whose bloody ensemble more than earns its allusive moniker. The chilling opening sequence would make this a classic on its own; that the rest of the film somehow lives up to that knockout of an opener makes it an all-timer. —MN
4. “Dunkirk” (2017)
Rather than wind his way through another tortuous twisty genre plot bedazzled with visual effects, Christopher Nolan keeps spectacular World War II action epic “Dunkirk” deceptively simple. He immerses the audience in the action by placing them close to the subjective points-of-view of his characters’ experiences on land, sea, and air (within varying timeframes) throughout the 1940 evacuation of 400,000 British and Allied soldiers stranded on the beach at Dunkirk, France, surrounded by enemy forces. We experience the Germans’ pitiless attacks on the exposed, vulnerable soldiers as they try to survive relentless strafing from Luftwaffe guns, artillery explosions, bombs, and torpedoes. Most of the propulsive action is without dialogue. We spend the most time with British private Tommy (newcomer Fionn Whitehead), ducking and bobbing and running and swimming and hiding in order to come out alive. We also root for Nolan veteran Tom Hardy (in yet another enclosing mask) as the pilot in the cockpit of an RAF Spitfire, aggressively attacking enemy Messerschmitts as he anxiously checks his fuel levels. Mark Rylance plays a British civilian whose yacht is requisitioned to cross the English Channel to rescue soldiers at Dunkirk 26 miles away. Kenneth Branagh as the British Navy Commander overseeing Operation Dynamo provides a running perspective on the chaotic events and does the most talking. Finally, Nolan has a good shot at landing his first Oscar nomination for directing, because “Dunkirk” is nothing if not impeccably directed, in both IMAX and 65 mm. —AT
3. “The Hurt Locker” (2008)
Who could have known that Jeremy Renner staring at an aisle full of cereal boxes would come to be Hollywood’s most indelible image of the Iraq War? “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug,” reads the quotation that opens the film, and Kathryn Bigelow spends the next two hours underscoring both the lethality and addictiveness of combat. She, too, is a kind of dealer, one whose dose of cinematic adrenaline was rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Director (making her the first, and so far only, woman to be so honored). We’ll be returning to “The Hurt Locker” more often than Renner’s addicted soldier returns to battle. —MN
2. “The White Ribbon” (2009)
Made in 2009 and set on the eve of World War I, Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” is actually most concerned with World War II. That it takes place in a small German village in which rigid adherence to law, tradition, and ritual is privileged above all else suggests what becomes of the impressionable children who are in the process of becoming their full selves. This is an intense war movie by implication; the film is, in its own way, one of the most chilling origin stories ever crafted. Filmed in black and white as stark as Haneke’s sensibilities, it’s unsettling throughout — but, unlike some of his other work, not overly clinical. There isn’t much amour in the severe auteur’s first Palme d’Or winner, but Haneke doesn’t make things easy for us in simply dismissing his characters as hateful, either; they’re much too complex (and, as a result, more unsettling) for that. —MN
1. “Zero Dark Thirty” (2013)
With ripped-from-the-headlines $52-million indie “Zero Dark Thirty,” director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal set out to dramatize what really happened in the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden. Chameleon Jessica Chastain earned her second Oscar nomination as Maya, a tough-as-nails CIA agent based on the real undercover operative who doggedly pursued the Al-Qaeda leader. “I’m gonna smoke everybody involved in this op,” Maya declares after one vicious terrorist attack. “And then I’m gonna kill bin Laden.” It’s a chilling moment in an intense movie. Rangy blue-eyed Australian Jason Clarke costars as a wily CIA operative who is adept at extracting information. Bigelow’s disjunctive cutting style and Boal’s on-the-fly observational journalism do not follow narrative conventions; the movie generated political controversy for representing waterboarding as a means to extricate information vital to bin Laden’s capture. Brainy and deliberate, the CIA procedural hews closer to “Carlos” and “All the President’s Men” than “Act of Valor.” And yes, Maya gets her man. —AT
