Chapter 24

The Ten Best Movies on U.S. Military History

In This Chapter

Creating cinematic magic

Preserving historical accuracy

Capturing great concepts and performances

Nothing brings history to life like movies. In movies, the people we read about in our history books become actual living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human beings. War and military history contain so much human drama that they are irresistible topics for filmmakers. I’m a big believer in the power of film to teach U.S. military history, and I use movies all the time in my classes. In this chapter, I’ve prepared my list of the ten very best films on U.S. military history. My biggest criterion for excellence is historical accuracy, followed by the overall quality of the filmmaking and the actors’ performances. No doubt this list will provoke some disagreement and debate.

1. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Quite simply, Saving Private Ryan is the greatest movie ever made. Steven Spielberg’s World War II blockbuster is about a small group of U.S. Army Rangers whose mission is to find Pvt. James Ryan (Matt Damon), a young 101st Airborne Division paratrooper somewhere in Normandy. Ryan is to be removed from combat because his family has already lost three sons to the war. From D-Day at Omaha beach to the fictional Norman town of Romelle, Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks) leads his Rangers in combat and on their search for Ryan. Hanks’s performance is, in my view, the greatest of his legendary career. Before the filming of this movie, Dale Dye, the ex-Marine who has made a career as a military advisor for dozens of war films, worked his magic again, putting the principal actors through an intense boot camp. By the time the cameras rolled, Hanks and his guys knew their weapons, their jobs, and one another.

Spielberg succeeds in bringing the smell, sights, and overall feel of 1944 Normandy to life. While not every historical detail in Saving Private Ryan is perfect, Spielberg’s commitment to realism is obvious. The movie portrays World War II combat more accurately and powerfully than any other film before or since. The opening scenes at Omaha beach are some of the most intense ever put on film. The same holds true for the small-town combat scenes in Neuville-au-Plain and Romelle, which are often overlooked.

Saving Private Ryan hit theaters in 1998 like a proverbial bombshell. The film was so powerful, so realistic, and such a cultural sensation that it was the subject of dozens of newspaper and magazine articles. It almost single-handedly sparked a renewed interest in World War II and those Americans who fought the war. If you watch any war movie made after 1998, you’ll immediately notice the profound influence of Spielberg’s movie.

2. Black Hawk Down (2001)

Based on Mark Bowden’s excellent book, Black Hawk Down is the story of a bloody urban battle in October 1993 between U.S. Army Special Operations soldiers and Somali militiamen in Mogadishu. The battle was an American victory, but it cost the lives of 19 Americans, mostly U.S. Army Rangers, and prompted an American withdrawal from Somalia. It also created an earnest wish among Americans to never get involved in such urban combat again.

The movie is so authentic that it nearly has a documentary feel. Director Ridley Scott gets the little things right, including the soldier’s weapons, the slang terms they use, the real conversations they had, the tactics they employ in combat, and even the proper sequence of events in the actual battle. Black Hawk Down is shocking, graphic, and disturbing, as any good war film must be. It’s also confusing, dirty, messy, and chaotic. Just like war. In terms of wall-to-wall combat action, the movie has no equal. It is relentless and evocative.

Black Hawk Down was filmed right before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and released not long after them. What makes the movie truly significant is that it anticipated the exact kind of fighting American soldiers eventually would face in Iraq.

3. Glory (1989)

Glory portrays the trials and tribulations of the African American 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, from recruitment to its assault on Fort Wagner in 1863. The film is a wonderful blend of great acting, good storytelling, and accurate history. Matthew Broderick stars as Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the 54th. Morgan Freeman plays Sgt. Maj. John Rawlins. Denzel Washington is Pvt. Trip, an escaped slave who is itching to lash back at the white power structure, North and South.

Glory manages to intelligently touch on most of the war’s major issues, including race relations, slavery, property rights, states’ rights, and differing conceptions of freedom. It’s also a first-rate combat chronicle, graphically portraying such battles as Antietam and the assault on Fort Wagner. By and large, director Edward Zwick went to great pains to make his movie historically accurate, and it shows. Throughout the film, we see this small group of young black soldiers evolve as a group, committing themselves not just to the cause they’re fighting for, but also to one another. By the end of the movie, they are molded as one, fighting to prove themselves as men and to ensure a better future for their families. In that sense, their story transcends race. It’s really about the struggles of all Americans in combat throughout U.S. military history.

4. Platoon (1986)

In making this film, director Oliver Stone drew on his own Vietnam War experiences as a grunt in the 25th Infantry Division. The movie portrays a platoon of soldiers from that division in 1967–1968. To put the actors into a realistic mindset, military advisor Dale Dye put them through an uncompromising boot camp. The authenticity shows in their performances. They eat, walk, talk, dress, and even spit like real grunts. As a Vietnam vet, Stone makes sure to get all the little things right. For instance, the jungle patrol scenes are the best ever recorded on film. Every bit of the soldier’s experience is in these scenes — the heat, the bugs, the foliage, the fatigue, and even the sense of isolation.

For well or ill, Platoon was really the first movie to address the Vietnam War honestly. Sensing this, Vietnam veterans flocked to the theaters to see it. Stone conveys in Platoon an obvious antiwar message but with a disarming passion for depicting the moral ambiguities of guerrilla war. From one scene to the next, the Americans might be heroes or villains, depending on the circumstances. Stone’s ultimate purpose is not just to criticize America’s involvement in Vietnam, but to counsel us to learn from the Vietnam experience to produce a better future.

5. Hamburger Hill (1987)

In terms of pure combat realism and an accurate portrayal of American soldiers in Vietnam, this film has few equals. It’s one of the few Vietnam War movies that even comes close to portraying the war accurately. In May 1969, paratroopers from the 187th Parachute Infantry Regiment spent ten bloody days capturing Hill 937. They called this awful place “Hamburger Hill.” This movie tells that story, through the eyes of one beleaguered squad. The battle scenes are graphic and violent. Soldiers from both sides get blown to pieces. Mud is everywhere; so is blood. Sometimes the fighting is hand-to-hand. Death seems almost inescapable. The world seems confined to only this horrible hill and the death struggle with the North Vietnamese. Director John Irvin shows us this violence, not for cheap, ignorant entertainment value as in so many other films, but because this is the way Hamburger Hill actually was.

6. A Midnight Clear (1992)

If there is a better film that wrestles with the morality of war, I have yet to see it. Based on a novel by the same title, A Midnight Clear is the story of six youthful American soldiers in the Ardennes on the eve of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. They are the survivors of a decimated intelligence and reconnaissance squad. They are all bright individuals, as evidenced by their high scores on Army classification tests. But the loss of their friends, along with the seeming endlessness and futility of the war have demoralized them. Nonetheless, their coldhearted battalion commander, Maj. Griffin, orders them to hole up in a house in no man’s land to keep an eye on the Germans. Director Keith Gordon portrayed the European winter so effectively that you can almost feel the biting cold.

The sector is quiet, except for the presence of a quirky squad of German soldiers who seem to have no interest in fighting. The plot that follows is not as important as the combat-related themes that Gordon addresses, such as the camaraderie of American fighting soldiers, the struggle with the elements, the search for meaning in war, and the troubling question of who is a greater threat, enemy soldiers or one’s own officers.

7. Memphis Belle (1990)

Memphis Belle tells the story of one American B-17 bomber crew’s final mission over German-occupied Europe. During World War II, director William Wyler had immortalized this crew in a documentary by the same title. In 1990, director Michael Caton-Jones’s fictionalized Memphis Belle retold that story by focusing on the men’s 25th and final mission to Bremen (the real Belle crew flew its last mission to Wilhelmshaven).

If the crew can carry out the mission and make it back to its base in England, the men get to go home for good. In the course of the mission, nearly everything happens to these guys. German fighters attack them. Flak does terrific damage to their plane. They have engine trouble. Their oxygen system is on the fritz. One crew member gets badly wounded.

The excellence of Caton-Jones’s approach is that he starkly portrayed the kind of things that routinely happened to World War II American airmen in Europe. Caton-Jones shows us the effect of intense cold at high altitudes, the claustrophobia of an oxygen mask, the helplessness of flying through flak, the intense superstition that infused airmen, the camaraderie among them, and the despair of seeing other planes go down. In filming the movie, he used the largest surviving collection of B-17s. To prepare for their parts, the actors paired up with their real-life counterparts who flew on the Belle.

8. Dances with Wolves (1990)

The most mythologized aspect of U.S. military history is the Indian Wars. In general, Hollywood filmmakers seem incapable of portraying the American West accurately. Not Dances with Wolves, though. The movie is the story of John Dunbar, an Army officer whose bravery in a Civil War battle earns him his choice of whatever posting he wants. He selects an assignment on the frontier in Lakota Sioux country (today’s upper Midwest). At first, he thinks of the Indians as enemies, but over time, he befriends them, marries a white woman whom they have captured, and becomes a member of the tribe. To the Army, he is now a deserter, a wanted man. At the end of the film, Dunbar and his wife leave the tribe to become fugitives, so as not to attract unwanted Army attention on his tribal friends.

Kevin Costner produced, directed, and starred in Dances with Wolves as Dunbar. He used real Native American actors. They spoke in actual Lakota Sioux language. The movie shows little in the way of actual combat, which is quite true to the Old West. Costner portrays Lakota Sioux life as it actually was, warts and all, from a hunting party that eats the heart of a freshly killed buffalo to the interplay between tribal men and women. Dances with Wolves is the most lucrative western in film history, proving that audiences hunger not just for drama about the Old West, but authenticity.

9. A Bridge Too Far (1977)

From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, Hollywood produced several World War II epics portraying big battles with lots of stars. A Bridge Too Far is the best of these epics. Based quite accurately on Cornelius Ryan’s book of the same title, the film portrays Operation Market Garden, an Allied scheme to defeat Nazi Germany in the fall of 1944. The plan was to drop two American and one British airborne division behind German lines. The paratroopers were to capture key bridges and hold the main highway that led into Germany. Then, powerful British armored units were supposed to punch through enemy lines, hook up with the airborne units, and finally roar across the Rhine River bridges into Germany, all the way to Berlin.

The real-life plan failed miserably, but the same could not be said of this movie. A Bridge Too Far is loaded with acting talent. Every leading actor of the time was in this film, including James Caan, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Michael Caine, Ryan O’Neal, Gene Hackman, Elliot Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, and Maximilian Schell.

The director, Richard Attenborough, didn’t shy away from showing the grim realities of the battle — the burning bodies and vehicles at Arnhem bridge, the spine-tingling terror of the 82nd Airborne’s Waal River crossing, and the shriek of artillery shells. His depiction of the airborne drop is breathtaking. He used actual C-47 transports like the ones the Allies employed in 1944. He also used real paratroopers to show the drop, putting cameras on some of the jumpers, creating a “you are there” immediacy to the movie.

10. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

The Dirty Dozen portrays a group of American misfits on the eve of the Normandy invasion during World War II. All of these men are in the stockade for serious crimes, including rape and murder. They have one chance for redemption, though, and it comes in the person of Maj. John Reisman (Lee Marvin), a hard-bitten Special Operations officer whose superiors have tasked him with a pre–D-Day, high-risk mission to kill German officers at a chateau in Brittany, France. If the convicts submit to Reisman’s intense training and carry out his mission successfully, freedom beckons.

The movie is an entertaining blend of historical accuracy, humor, tension, and drama. The Army did actually offer convicts the chance to reduce their sentences if they volunteered for dangerous duty. The ensemble cast of Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Robert Ryan, Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, and football star Jim Brown absolutely shines. World War II vets Marvin, Borgnine, Savalas, and Bronson all contributed their knowledge. What’s interesting about this movie is that the villains are not just the Nazis but also U.S. Army senior officers. The film could not have been made in an earlier, more idealistic time. But in the 1960s, American audiences were ready for antiheroes like the misfits of The Dirty Dozen.