Paste's 100 Greatest War Movies
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War. What is it good for? Well, if nothing else, then a tidy template for cinema: conflict, clear protagonists and antagonists, heightened emotions, and a generally unpredictable, lawless atmosphere which—as per the western—has since the dawn of cinema offered an elastic dramatic environment in which filmmakers can explore men at both their best and worst. And make no mistake, the war movie is almost always about men.
It’s the most masculine of genres, the fact that armies have throughout history often been almost exclusively male seeing to it that men almost always dominate these things. It’s a genre that emphasizes action and existential angst. It’s also a malleable genre, and one that could broadly include all manner of films that we ultimately ruled out of the running in this list.
With this top 100, we’ve made the decision to include only movies whose wars are based on historical conflicts, so none of the likes of Edge of Tomorrow or Starship Troopers. We’ve picked films that deal with soldiers, soldiering and warfare directly, meaning wartime movies set primarily away from conflict, often told largely or exclusively from the civilian perspective—a category which includes such classics as The Cranes Are Flying and Hope & Glory, Grave of the Fireflies and Forbidden Games—didn’t make the cut. Post-war dramas, like Ashes and Diamonds and Germany, Year Zero, as well as films that go to war for only a fraction of the running time, such as From Here to Eternity and Born on the Fourth of July, were also excluded.
Some tough choices were made on what actually constituted a “war movie.” Resistance dramas feature in this list, but Casablanca doesn’t appear. Likewise Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped and Sidney Lumet’s The Hill. It was decided ultimately that the war was too much a peripheral element in these films. On the other hand, while both western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and biopic The Imitation Game feature war prominently, they, like Casablanca (a romance with noir and thriller elements) plus A Man Escaped and The Hill (both prison movies), belong more obviously to other genres. We’ve also decided not to include movies which focus on the Holocaust here; those are set to appear in another feature entirely.
Regarding the films that do feature here: our 100 hail from all over the world. These films were released as recently as last year and as far back as 1930. They range from comical to harrowing, action-packed to quietly introspective, proudly gung-ho to deeply anti-war. They are a diverse set of movies; they are also worthy of being called the 100 greatest war movies ever made.
Published May 2017
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1 new
Apocalypse Now
1979, in 37 top lists Check -
2 new
Lawrence of Arabia
1962, in 40 top lists Check -
3 new
The Thin Red Line
1998, in 14 top lists Check -
4 new
Idi i smotri
1985 — a.k.a. Come and See, in 27 top lists Check -
5 new
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
1943, in 16 top lists Check -
6 new
Csillagosok, katonák
1967 — a.k.a. The Red and the White, in 8 top lists Check -
7 new
Paths of Glory
1957, in 26 top lists Check -
8 new
La battaglia di Algeri
1966 — a.k.a. The Battle of Algiers, in 29 top lists Check -
9 new
La grande illusion
1937 — a.k.a. The Grand Illusion, in 30 top lists Check -
10 new
Platoon
1986, in 21 top lists Check -
11 new
L'armée des ombres
1969 — a.k.a. Army of Shadows, in 18 top lists Check -
12 new
Das Boot
1981 — a.k.a. The Boat, in 15 top lists Check -
13 new
Ivanovo detstvo
1962 — a.k.a. Ivan's Childhood, in 12 top lists Check -
14 new
Full Metal Jacket
1987, in 18 top lists Check -
15 new
Saving Private Ryan
1998, in 28 top lists Check -
16 new
All Quiet on the Western Front
1930, in 19 top lists Check -
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The Deer Hunter
1978, in 26 top lists Check -
18 new
The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957, in 32 top lists Check -
19 new
Nobi
1959 — a.k.a. Fires on the Plain, in 6 top lists Check -
20 new
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
2003, in 8 top lists Check -
21 new
Ice Cold in Alex
1958, in 1 top list Check -
22 new
Twelve O'Clock High
1949, in 4 top lists Check -
23 new
Patton
1970, in 13 top lists Check -
24 new
Three Kings
1999, in 4 top lists Check -
25 new
Cross of Iron
1977, in 3 top lists Check -
26 new
Ran
1985, in 25 top lists Check -
27 new
The Killing Fields
1984, in 12 top lists Check -
28 new
The Great Escape
1963, in 14 top lists Check -
29 new
The Dirty Dozen
1967, in 8 top lists Check -
30 new
Empire of the Sun
1987, in 9 top lists Check -
31 new
The Hurt Locker
2008, in 13 top lists Check -
32 new
The Big Red One
1980, in 10 top lists Check -
33 new
Zwartboek
2006 — a.k.a. Black Book, in 5 top lists Check -
34 new
Der Untergang
2004 — a.k.a. Downfall, in 14 top lists Check -
35 new
Vals Im Bashir
2008 — a.k.a. Waltz with Bashir, in 11 top lists Check -
36 new
Ningen no jôken
1959 — a.k.a. The Human Condition I: No Greater Love, in 13 top lists Check -
37 new
Ningen no jôken
1959 — a.k.a. The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity, in 12 top lists Check -
38 new
Ningen no jôken
1961 — a.k.a. The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer, in 12 top lists Check -
39 new
Where Eagles Dare
1968, in 7 top lists Check -
40 new
Voskhozhdenie
1977 — a.k.a. The Ascent, in 14 top lists Check -
41 new
The Dam Busters
1955, in 2 top lists Check -
42 new
Play Dirty
1969, in 0 top lists Check -
43 new
Battleground
1949, in 3 top lists Check -
44 new
M*A*S*H
1970, in 21 top lists Check -
45 new
Men in War
1957, in 4 top lists Check -
46 new
The Train
1964, in 4 top lists Check -
47 new
The Guns of Navarone
1961, in 6 top lists Check -
48 new
Die Brücke
1959 — a.k.a. The Bridge, in 7 top lists Check -
49 new
Black Hawk Down
2001, in 5 top lists Check -
50 new
Kanal
1957, in 11 top lists Check
Last updated on May 10, 2017; source