Saving Private Ryan - good war movies

[TofuBlender and Germany1]

Saving Private Ryan. I love this movie. I dont know if it was necessary to make a thread about this but ,.. great movie. Whats your favorite scene? Mine is the opening D-Day one.

But the total point of this thread is .... you know any good non corny war movies about Vietnam or WWII . Where bullets kill people not like others:)


Black Hawk Down is awesome also. Kudos to Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan.:thumb:

[Tim]

Saving Private Ryan is indeed a good war movie. Favorite scene for me would have to be at the very end when they have to hold the bridge then they destroy it at the very end. Man thats such a great movie. Blackhawk down was also A good one. I own both movies. Dont really have a fav. scene in blackhawk though. Its just such a great movie with so much action in it. Another war movie I liked was Windtalkers, not really great like some others but it was good none the less. I havent seen all of The thin red line so i cant really comment on it. I need to go rent it.

[PutsTheFunInFuneral]

Platoon is another good movie. It shows a firsthand account on what Vietnam was really like. It has some good action, some tense moments, and parts that make you sick to your stomach.

I've heard good things about Apocalypse Now, but I have yet to see it.

[SKiLLeDcs]

Apocalypse Now is one of the best war movies.... Well maybe not best; but still damn good.

[Scythe404]

Since everyone's heard of films like Full Metal Jacket and the like, i'd like to promote one film that often gets overlooked, but is the single most painfully accurate and tensely wrought portrayals of Pearl Harbour ever created.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066473/)

It got Oscar nods for its editing, art direction and cinematography, and won for special effects. All you really need to know is that it is a fascinating flick, told in a rare fashion: with absolutely no bias. It keeps you on a tightrope of suspense the whole time even though you know what's going to happen (the tragic inevitably even adds a subtle layer of drama), and we get some insight to some of the men who made the blunders that affected millions. Really and excellent and criminally overlooked film in the war catalogue.

[Kurtz]

D-Day scene was the best.

Other good war movies:

Apocalypse Now
Full Metal Jacket
Das Boot
Platoon
Paths of Glory
Tora Tora Tora

[Mexican Bandito]

Yeah Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down are really intense films.

Full Metal Jacket and Casulties of War are really great too - I recommend seeing them if you haven't already.

[Liberi Fatali]

As I said in the other war movies thread that we had a couple of months ago (Link (http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=414896)).

My favourite war movie would of course have to be Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen's performance in that movie is truly superb, and Francis Ford Coppola captures the psychological effects of the war stunningly well. It certianly is one of Coppola's many aces as Director, and right up there with The Godfather I and II. Well not quite.

In a close second I'd go with Saving Private Ryan, I haven't really watched it closely like I did with Apocalypse Now. So I must do that someday.

I'm not really a war movie fanatic though.

Tbqh, I often prefer movies that show the world outside the war. Often they create a very tense scene, and show some of the conflict back home. Especially films where they show the build up to war, with the main characters caught in the buildup, or clueless to what is happening. Movies like House of Flying Daggers, Memoirs of a Geisha and Forrest Gump come to mind.

[HazMan]

Platoon is another good movie. It shows a firsthand account on what Vietnam was really like. It has some good action, some tense moments, and parts that make you sick to your stomach.

I've heard good things about Apocalypse Now, but I have yet to see it.

Platoon is a great movie, a true classic.

Apocalypse Now is not a typical war movie, it has lots of strange symbolism and moments of bizarreness in it. That said i love it, mainly for those reasons. Full Metal Jacket has a similar type of bizarreness to it but with a far larger dose of black humour.

[Pop music sucks]

We Were Soldiers. Such a realistic movie. It's one of the closer adaptations of the Vietnam War that our family can only watch.

Platoon is forbidden to watch in this home, as my dad was a vet and had served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War. I was too young when we rented it, all I was told is that my dad had a severe flashback and freaked out.

[Smokey D]

If you watch Apocaplyse Now, be sure to read Heart of Darkness as well.

[HazMan]

If you watch Apocaplyse Now, be sure to read Heart of Darkness as well.

I read that for an English assignment, long time ago. Wish i had an appreciation of the movie back then however, for i hated it. I would like to revisit it now.

[sketchyjoe]

As well as the Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now etc, I really love war films that mix humour with war like M*A*S*H. I thought Three Kings did this fantastically and was a great film.

Jarhead also did this brilliantly and easily warrants inclusion in the list of best war films even though it's not really a conventional war film. It's a lot like Buffalo Soldiers (another great underrated film) in a way.

A classic underrated war film is the Dirty Dozen where Lee Marvin leads a bunch of convicts on a suicidal mission behind enemy lines. The scene where Donald Sutherland pretends to be a general is one of my favourite in any movie.

No-one's mentioned the Deer Hunter so far either. That's an amazing film.

I also love all those Sunday afternoon classics like Where Eagles Dare, Ice Cold in Alex, The Guns of Navarone, Kelly's Heroes, The Dambusters, Hell is for Heroes, The Longest Day, The Bridge over the River Kwai, Zulu, Tora! Tora! Tora!, A Bridge Too Far and The Great Escape.


Saving Private Ryan is alright but extremely overrated. It's not as good as any of the films I've mentioned above.

[Turtle Soup]

The Great Escape (close enough to war)

[Mr. Ron]

Black hawk down is a damn good movie and M*A*S*H kicks everyone's ***.

[Cain]

Some littler-known but highly graphic and/or dead-on accurate portrayals of war:

Gettysburg (1993) - Probably the single most historically accurate depiction of any battle in cinema history, with the possible exception of "A Bridge Too Far," and right up there with "Glory" as the cream of the crop of the criminally underexploited American Civil War movies. Despite requiring intensely styled makeup on the part of its leads, this is probably Jeff Daniels' finest acting moment portraying Joshua Chamberlain as the hero of Little Round Top on Gettysburg's second day of battle, and Martin Sheen and Tom Beringer turn out excellent performances as Lee and Longstreet. There is little graphic violence in the film, but a tremendously moving score by Randy Edelman and the visual spectacle of seeing literally thousands of soldiers (embodied by reenactors on the actual battlefield location, stripped of monuments for the purpose of the film) clash together in the pivotal moment of the Civil War in the east is an incredible thing to see. Plus, the historical accuracy is dead-on. Disregard "Gods and Generals," the insufferably boring and pretentious sequel.

The Beast of War (1982) - An American film about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, this movie offers a surprisingly perceptive portrayal of Soviet Russian soldiers fighting against mujahadeen in Afghanistan: even if the ending is a little contrived, the parallel storylines this offers--that of a fanatically-led Soviet tank that gets lost in enemy territory after losing its column, due to a pause to exact a gory reprisal from villagers, and of the mujahadeen column following the tank hoping to destroy it--are extremely interesting in light of current world events, and the Afghans are completely humanized despite obviously being religious stalwarts. The best character is probably the Afghan Soviet officer attached to the tank, continuously accused of being a spy and a subhuman by the Russian tank commander but who nevertheless does his duty for what he feels would be good for his native land, just as the mujahadeen do what they feel is good for their native land, blurring the lines between good and evil in the land of enemies. An excellent film.

A Midnight Clear (1993) - This movie is probably one of the most eerie war films ever made--that said, it can hardly qualify as a war film in the first place. Taking place on the eve of the Ardennes offensive in 1944's winter, a decimated platoon of intelligence scouts--composed of very intelligent young men due to the martinet commander's cynical supposition that he'd get better intelligence if he made the smart soldiers get it for him--moves into an abandoned chateau somewhere out beyond the American front lines to see if there's any truth to rumors of a new German offensive. While there we see a number of eerie things, some witnessed by the platoon and the viewer: for instance, the frozen dead bodies of an American and a German soldier, propped upright in the middle of a road to appear as though they are dancing; hands poking out of mounds of snow unseen by the platoon; Germans who catch Americans out in the open, ready to fire, and instead fade back into the wilderness without firing. The behavior unnerves the Americans, who experience both Germans calling out to them in the night and a literal snowball fight with the German platoon, but quickly they realize that these are gestures of peace from a unit composed of scared old men and boys who wish to surrender before the offensive begins. The movie, while wonderfully peaceful and emotional, is not contrived, and the ending is so emotionally harrowing I can barely stand to watch it anymore. A great sleeper.

A Bridge Too Far (1978) - Directed by Richard Attenborough and packed with nearly every major movie star of the '60s and '70s, this is probably the most historically accurate movie about any aspect of World War II. It's also INCREDIBLY long, but well worth it if you wish to see an interesting film about the Western Allies' greatest disaster, the Operation "Market Garden" designed to seize bridges over the Rhine to end the war by Christmas. The cast is enormously extensive and packed with big names: they include Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Krüger, Ryan O'Neal, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Liv Ullmann, Denholm Elliot, Peter Faber, Wolfgang Preiss, Donald Douglas, and Richard Kane.

My personal favorite "dumb commando movies" would have to be "The Guns of Naverone," and "Where Eagles Dare." Totally historically inaccurate, but well worth watching if you want to see (in the latter movie) Clint Eastwood mowing down German soldiers by the dozen with an MP40 machine pistol in each hand.

[Iskandar]

Cain's the most verbose poster I've ever seen. He just plain types a lot. :)

I enjoyed Enemy At the Gates, even more so after finding out it was based on a true story.

[Mr. Ron]

If anyone caught the mini-series of "Band of brothers" on HBO, that was an amazing set of movies.

[Cain]

Cain's the most verbose poster I've ever seen. He just plain types a lot. :)

I enjoyed Enemy At the Gates, even more so after finding out it was based on a true story.

I'm sorry. :( I guess I should really work on getting my points more concise. I just compulsively go in-depth into everything I find interesting or meaningful.

If you read the book "War of the Rats," which is essentially the story that "Enemy at the Gates" is based on (even though the movie's named for a general history book about the battle), you will see that "EATG" could have been a much cooler movie. The whole love triangle nonsense (the love existed but the triangle didn't), and the turning of Zaitsev into a much more sheepish character than he was in life dilute the massive power and coolness of the notion of two expert snipers hunting each other. They made a mistake in making the German the overly cool one: Zaitsev's victory is nearly inexplicable even with the contrived suicide of Danilov. Cinematically, it's a weak movie, which is unfortunate because of the fact that it's about a non-Western European battle, and plus the true story is so cool.

[jaymz_is_god]

Platoon is one of my favourite movies. I thought Full Metal Jacket was good. I didn't like The Deer Hunter too much. There was some bloody good acting in it, but I thought it was a bit slow.

[Illmatic]

Full Metal Jacket is my personal favorite war movie. No war movie portrays the loss of self and the brutality in Vietnam like FMJ does.

The Dirty Dozen is a good one too. You can't go wrong when you have Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland in the same flick.

[MattyBlade]

Cain's the most verbose poster I've ever seen. He just plain types a lot. :)

I enjoyed Enemy At the Gates, even more so after finding out it was based on a true story.

Yes! and also, behind enemy lines was great!


I love the sniper movies for sure, you just reminded me that I HAVE to go buy these. also, I'm going to be picking up full metal jacket :D

[[Nightbreak]]

Full Metal Jacket is my favourite film of all time, let alone war films. Platoon is good, as is Where Eagles Dare. I love the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan, it was done on such a scale as had never been done before.

Apocalypse Now was a huge let-down, hardly any action. The build up was boring and it was far, far too long.

[MattyBlade]

'
Apocalypse Now was a huge let-down, hardly any action. The build up was boring and it was far, far too long.

You wanna talk huge let downs? Pearl harbor.

[AA-12]

I love war movies very much. We Were Soldiers probably hit me the hardest though.

[-Listy-]

As well as the Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now etc, I really love war films that mix humour with war like M*A*S*H. I thought Three Kings did this fantastically and was a great film.

Jarhead also did this brilliantly and easily warrants inclusion in the list of best war films even though it's not really a conventional war film. It's a lot like Buffalo Soldiers (another great underrated film) in a way.

A classic underrated war film is the Dirty Dozen where Lee Marvin leads a bunch of convicts on a suicidal mission behind enemy lines. The scene where Donald Sutherland pretends to be a general is one of my favourite in any movie.

No-one's mentioned the Deer Hunter so far either. That's an amazing film.

I also love all those Sunday afternoon classics like Where Eagles Dare, Ice Cold in Alex, The Guns of Navarone, Kelly's Heroes, The Dambusters, Hell is for Heroes, The Longest Day, The Bridge over the River Kwai, Zulu, Tora! Tora! Tora!, A Bridge Too Far and The Great Escape.


Saving Private Ryan is alright but extremely overrated. It's not as good as any of the films I've mentioned above.

I love those films, I really need to see the Deer Hunter, is that the one with Robert DeNiro in it?

[Hep Kat]

The Longest Day is a very good movie.

[Triangle]

I really enjoyed Full Metal Jacket although I did think it could have been a tad longer. I found Apocalypse Now good, but it did drag on a bit, especially nearer the end. Saying Private Ryan's probably my favourite war film. That D-Day scene wins it over for me.

[Cain]

The Longest Day is a very good movie.

I liked that one. Another star-packed extravaganza. The movie unfortunately has a LOT of dated aspects, however. John Wayne is just such a bad actor.

[Mexican Bandito]

I love those films, I really need to see the Deer Hunter, is that the one with Robert DeNiro in it?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077416/
I'd forgotten about this film, I've not seen it in years. It is really great though.

[PAJJ]

IMO SPR isn't that great, it starts of awsome with the D-Day stuff, but trails of towards the end.
Apocalypse now is a war movie but it's not meant to be about physical combat.
I liked we were soilders, was pretty good.
Full Metal Jacket is probably the best one i've seen, increbile movie.

[Lord of Sword]

The Longest Day, which even has people like Sean Connery playing characters which are near enough extras, and A Bridge Too Far are my favourite war movies along with Saving Private Ryan. All Quiet on the Western Front is also one of the best, set in WW1 from the German viewpoint unlike almost all other war movies.

[seibel88]

Saving Private Ryan is a great movie, so is A Bridge Too Far. I'd like to see Full Metal Jacket.

[Cain]

I think more World War movies need to be set from the German viewpoint, in as honest a way as they can achieve. Too many movies with Germans as protagonists either unrealistically paint them as defeatist liberal patriots who hate all Nazis but are just fighting for their country, they guess, or makes them into equally unrealistic monstrous inhuman beasts. The Nazis were humans who did inhuman things. People should paint them as such.

[Scythe404]

The Longest Day, which even has people like Sean Connery playing characters which are near enough extras, and A Bridge Too Far are my favourite war movies along with Saving Private Ryan. All Quiet on the Western Front is also one of the best, set in WW1 from the German viewpoint unlike almost all other war movies.

Ooh! How'd i forget that one? Fantastic stuff.

If you still want historical accuracy, another good flick is Pork Chop Hill starring the sensational Gregory Peck. It's very tense, but has a good host of well staged battles. It was also a very relevant battle over the most irrelevant thing: A hill that meant absolutely nothing to either side.

As China sat down with America for peace talks, the war was pretty much at an end, and yet, both sides had their armies diving in head first to capture this hill as a literal game of chicken; a sociopath's subplot to the end of a war, except the 'sublplot' is the main plot here. If the Americans hadn't won here, it's likely the Chinese would've broken off the peace talks with the notion that their army still had a fighting chance for victory. It's a well done and relevant piece.

[Dog]

I think more World War movies need to be set from the German viewpoint, in as honest a way as they can achieve. Too many movies with Germans as protagonists either unrealistically paint them as defeatist liberal patriots who hate all Nazis but are just fighting for their country, they guess, or makes them into equally unrealistic monstrous inhuman beasts. The Nazis were humans who did inhuman things. People should paint them as such.
Have you seen Der Untergang (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/)? It's a very well made and captivating German film about Hitler's last days. It does a great a job of humanizing Hitler and not just portraying him as 100% madman. Highly recommended.

[Cain]

Have you seen Der Untergang (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/)? It's a very well made and captivating German film about Hitler's last days. It does a great a job of humanizing Hitler and not just portraying him as 100% madman. Highly recommended.

If the translation of Der Untergang is "The Downfall" I most certainly have seen it, and it is indeed quite excellent.

On the other hand, it is essentially the same story as "The Bunker" which starred a raving Anthony Hopkins as Hitler. Great movie, that. But yeah, "Downfall" is equally excellent, if only for the authenticity its performance in German lends.

[Dave de Sylvia]

I think more World War movies need to be set from the German viewpoint, in as honest a way as they can achieve. Too many movies with Germans as protagonists either unrealistically paint them as defeatist liberal patriots who hate all Nazis but are just fighting for their country, they guess, or makes them into equally unrealistic monstrous inhuman beasts. The Nazis were humans who did inhuman things. People should paint them as such.
Such a move would put Steven Spielberg out of business.

If the translation of Der Untergang is "The Downfall"
That's what it means, yeah. Literally, 'the way beneath' if my German is less than faulty.

[Magical_Mystery_Tour]

Longest Day
Bridge on the River Kwai-one of the best war movie ever IMO
Great Escape
A bridge to Far

All great war movies.

[Kurtz]

Oh yeah, how did I forget All Quiet on the Western Front?

[sensitiveorgan00]

Has anyone seen Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War? (http://imdb.com/title/tt0386064/)

It's about two brothers in the Korean War. I thought it was great, other opinions?

[~grif~]

Black Hawk Down
Mephise Belle
Platoon
Saving Private Ryan
Thin Red Line <very poetic

[Iskandar]

Has anyone seen Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War? (http://imdb.com/title/tt0386064/)

It's about two brothers in the Korean War. I thought it was great, other opinions?
It's great.

[metalkingtiger]

My favs

The longest day
Saving Private Ryan
Band of Brothers (the best war series ever)
A bridge too far
Black hawk down

Best submarine movies
Das boot
The enemy below
U-571

[Straf]

That's what it means, yeah. Literally, 'the way beneath' if my German is less than faulty.

A direct translation would be more like "The end", or "The Fall" (as in, the fall of the empire or something like that.) But you're right about the separate meanings of the words unter and gang:)

On topic:

I agree, SPR is a great movie. I also agree that Full Metal Jacket is a great movie. However, most people in here sound like watching FMJ was a great experience - I felt horrible through most of the movie (maybe a testimony to how well it is done). I guess that's the point of the movie, but did anyone feel the same?

And since we're talking Kubrick, Doctor Strangelove is an awesome movie - but not really a war movie so I'll stop talking about it.

EDIT: Everyone should watch Band of Brothers. It's truly a great series.

[dustyboy316]

Enemy at the Gates
That one with Nicolas Cage.. Windtalkers.

[Kurtz]

That one with Nicolas Cage.. Windtalkers.
Oh my god, that sucked.

[dustyboy316]

Oh my god, that sucked.

I liked it personally. Wasn't the best, but no one else had mentioned it.

[Smokey D]

']Apocalypse Now was a huge let-down, hardly any action. The build up was boring and it was far, far too long.

Apocaplyse Now isn't meant to be about action. It's a critique of the fraudulence of so called civilisation and its inability to control man's own heart of darkness.

[HazMatBlue]

Kelly's Heros

not meant to be realistic, but still very entertaining

And the band of brothers series is amazing, i like historical accuracy in WWII movies and Band of Brothers has it

[Shaft!]

"The Killing Fields" is a movie regarding Cambodia in the Vietnam War/Post-Vietnam War era.
We watched this movie in my Foreign Policy class last semester and I thought it did an excellent job of portraying journalism in a war period. I thought it was also very clear in depicting the situations that Cambodians who weren't with the military rule went under. What made it a more powerful film for me was the fact that the the movie was based off of a true story and that the lead Cambodian actor in the film had been in the concentration camps depicted in the movie.

[Katana]

The only movie in this thread that I've seen and don't like is Windtalkers. Cage is an unrealistic Rambo. And he barely ever reloads.

[br3ad_man]

Platoon is my favourite war movie. It's just perfect. I've just started reading Heart of Darkness for English Extension class and my Mum bought Apocalyspe Now for me. I will be watching it today and posting my thoughts. Hopefully it will help me to understand the book a bit better.

[Mr. Ron]

The last Samurai. Such an awesome movie. Not ashamed to say I got teary eyed at the end. Such bravery.

[blondie]

war movies... ehhm...
jarhead and the big red one.

[HazMan]

The last Samurai. Such an awesome movie. Not ashamed to say I got teary eyed at the end. Such bravery.

It was good, except Tom Cruise kept dying and then turning up in the next scene and i'm going 'Ah **** he's back again.' Also i saw it at the cinema and one of my friends was complaining about the lack of sex scenes constantly.

[wonder_steve]

Has anyone read We Were Soldiers Once and Young? It is a fantastic read.

[Four Ton Mantis]

This thread needs more emphasis on Kubrick's Paths of Glory. Full Metal Jacket has already been mentioned many times.

[Apocalyptic Raids]

Oh my god, that sucked.
I agree. Crap movie.

I enjoyed Band Of Brothers more than any war movie I've seen.

[funluvinhobo]

Anyone seen the thin red line, thats a deadly movie, so is Black Halk Down.

[super_minty]

yeh kelly's heroes, the great escape & saving private ryan are all good action films.
I saw the pianist last night. Its based on a true story about a jewish pianist living in warsaw(sp?)His family, friends and most of the ghetto get taken away to concentration camps, but the pianist is saved by the jewish police, due to his talent, & goes on the run from the nazi's. Has very violent scenes & really shows the nazi hatred hatred of the jews. I could reccomend it to anyone who likes war films

[2muchket!]

Apocalypse Now ftw

[Kurtz]

I saw the pianist last night. Its based on a true story about a jewish pianist living in warsaw(sp?)His family, friends and most of the ghetto get taken away to concentration camps, but the pianist is saved by the jewish police, due to his talent, & goes on the run from the nazi's. Has very violent scenes & really shows the nazi hatred hatred of the jews. I could reccomend it to anyone who likes war films
Yeah, I've seen that too. One of my favorite movies ever.

The book it's based on is very good too.