War Movies
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Lone Wolf
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My favorite was Force 10 from Navarone released in '78 starring Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw. An ensemble cast and a sequel to the Guns of Navarone, Shaw took over the role of Capt. Keith Mallory from Gregory Peck and he did the role justice as did Ford in his role as Barnsby.
garnetsilver
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The Best Days of Our Lives, and Dr. Zhivago
I will always stop and watch these movies when they're on.
Tough to pick one, but I'd say "Saving Private Ryan." Others I really like are "The Longest Day," "Kelly's Heroes," "In Harm's Way," "Exodus," and "Battle of Algiers." Honorable mention to "Battle of Britain" for the spectacular aerial photography.
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garnetsilver
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ozentity
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South Pacific, it's the first thing I watched when we got colored TV.
Stevedog
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War movies are a bit of a mixed bag. Having been in the military myself I tend to notice all kinds of little details that take me right out of the moment and make me painfully aware that I'm watching a movie made by people who don't really know how this stuff works. Things like uniform insignia that's out of place or incorrect, a character giving orders to people of much higher rank or weapons handling and troop tactics that are completely wrong or impractical. I just saw one the other day where the hero was taking out terrorists left and right with a rifle that had no sights! For this reason I tend to prefer movies that are based on actual events because there tends to be a bit more attention to accuracy rather than just something a Hollywood writer dreamt up.
Some of my favorites are:
The Great Escape. I was always a bit of a Steve McQueen fan as a kid but in this film I have to admit he is overshadowed by all the other great performances. Both the emotional breakdown of Charles Bronson's character and the physical break down of Donald Pleasance's character always gets me teary eyed. It suffers a bit due to being made in the mid 1960's when Hollywood thought that Southern California could pass for just about every location on Earth but overall this is a great, tense film.
Glory. This one has a special place for me because at the time it came out I had been studying the Civil War in school. The subject matter was so intriguing to me that I had gone to the library to check out more books about the war. So I was aware of the existence of the all Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry before going into the theater, but seeing it play out with real people was amazing. It was history come to life. And while some elements of the film are exaggerated and many of the characters are fictitious the script was based on the actual writings of the real Colonel Shaw and does depict things that actually happened.
Black Hawk Down. The Battle of Mogadishu took place three years before I joined the Army and it's influence was felt during my training and enlistment. The Drill Sergeants made sure we knew the story and why it was important. At the time it was the longest sustained firefight the US military had experienced since Vietnam. The book Black Hawk Down was required reading for all officers and many of us enlisted read it as well. One of my friends in my unit had actually served in the 160th SOAR as maintenance and it was a big part of that units identity. So when the movie came out we just had to go see it, though there was some trepidation that it would be Hollywooded into some generic action flick. However I was pleasantly surprised by how much they tried to stay true to actual events. Being a movie they had to limit the cast so most characters in the film are composites of 2-3 real people. But overall a solid, well made movie that shows just how bad combat can get and just how young those who have to face it are.
While not a movie I also really like Band of Brothers. The thing that really stands out are the short interviews with WW2 veterans that begin each episode of this mini-series. These are real people who really lived these experiences and by prefacing the episode with this point it really drives home the emotional impact of what you are about to watch. It not until the end of the series when they give you names of these veterans so you can see that they are surviving members of Easy Company and you can match them up to the characters you have journeyed with this whole time.
My final film here is Act of Valor. It's the odd one out as the movie is not at all based on a true story. In fact the story itself is the kind of lame Hollywood action movie plot about unstoppable Navy SEALS shooting their way into enemy territory to save a captured CIA agent that I normally hate in war movies. However they got actual Navy SEALS to play the part. So while the story is cliche and the acting scenes are stiff, the actual combat scenes are absolutely spot on! These guys know how to be stealthy and when to go loud and it shows. From what I have heard they actually had to ask these guys to slow down a bit for the film because they were shooting the bad guys too quickly for standard film pacing. Bad guys in movies typically have to jump out, look at the hero and point their weapon before being shot down, in real combat that much time is an eternity.
Some of my favorites are:
The Great Escape. I was always a bit of a Steve McQueen fan as a kid but in this film I have to admit he is overshadowed by all the other great performances. Both the emotional breakdown of Charles Bronson's character and the physical break down of Donald Pleasance's character always gets me teary eyed. It suffers a bit due to being made in the mid 1960's when Hollywood thought that Southern California could pass for just about every location on Earth but overall this is a great, tense film.
Glory. This one has a special place for me because at the time it came out I had been studying the Civil War in school. The subject matter was so intriguing to me that I had gone to the library to check out more books about the war. So I was aware of the existence of the all Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry before going into the theater, but seeing it play out with real people was amazing. It was history come to life. And while some elements of the film are exaggerated and many of the characters are fictitious the script was based on the actual writings of the real Colonel Shaw and does depict things that actually happened.
Black Hawk Down. The Battle of Mogadishu took place three years before I joined the Army and it's influence was felt during my training and enlistment. The Drill Sergeants made sure we knew the story and why it was important. At the time it was the longest sustained firefight the US military had experienced since Vietnam. The book Black Hawk Down was required reading for all officers and many of us enlisted read it as well. One of my friends in my unit had actually served in the 160th SOAR as maintenance and it was a big part of that units identity. So when the movie came out we just had to go see it, though there was some trepidation that it would be Hollywooded into some generic action flick. However I was pleasantly surprised by how much they tried to stay true to actual events. Being a movie they had to limit the cast so most characters in the film are composites of 2-3 real people. But overall a solid, well made movie that shows just how bad combat can get and just how young those who have to face it are.
While not a movie I also really like Band of Brothers. The thing that really stands out are the short interviews with WW2 veterans that begin each episode of this mini-series. These are real people who really lived these experiences and by prefacing the episode with this point it really drives home the emotional impact of what you are about to watch. It not until the end of the series when they give you names of these veterans so you can see that they are surviving members of Easy Company and you can match them up to the characters you have journeyed with this whole time.
My final film here is Act of Valor. It's the odd one out as the movie is not at all based on a true story. In fact the story itself is the kind of lame Hollywood action movie plot about unstoppable Navy SEALS shooting their way into enemy territory to save a captured CIA agent that I normally hate in war movies. However they got actual Navy SEALS to play the part. So while the story is cliche and the acting scenes are stiff, the actual combat scenes are absolutely spot on! These guys know how to be stealthy and when to go loud and it shows. From what I have heard they actually had to ask these guys to slow down a bit for the film because they were shooting the bad guys too quickly for standard film pacing. Bad guys in movies typically have to jump out, look at the hero and point their weapon before being shot down, in real combat that much time is an eternity.
crux
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