Ryan McNeil
Note: I posted this same post around this time last year, but considering I’m still trying to shake this cold, that many of you weren’t reading my stuff back then, and that it’s all still rather apropos, I’ve decided to repost it.I took the photo above, of a Canadian soldier dressed in WWI fatigues at Toronto’s Remembrance Day Ceremony ten years ago.
Tomorrow, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, our nations take pause to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
I wanted to pay them tribute in my own little way, those who have died so that we may live. So after the jump, take a look at five titles that will always remind me of the terrible price that must sometimes be paid for our freedom. If there are any titles in my five that you haven’t seen, I truly recommend a run to the video store. And should you happen to see a veteran on your way, be sure to thank them for protecting our way of life.
Lest We Forget
THE THIN RED LINE (1998)
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)
FULL METAL JACKET (1987)
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006)
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
I'm a huge fan of the book All Quiet on the Western Front, and bought the movie because of it, but it's been sitting there forever. I'm scared if I watch it it'll somehow devalue the book for me since it's one of only a few books I like.
I've never been high up on the Full Metal Jacket bandwagon, but I can't argue against any film listed. If I had to go off the top of my head I'd go:
5. Patton
4. Platoon
3. The Longest Day
2. Saving Private Ryan
1. Glory
That's how they place in my top 100 anyways. If I was to go by strict war category I'd spend the next 500 years debating it :). Nice post though.
For me Platoon would need to be on the list and Hope and Glory and Empire of the Sun would need to be slipped in there somewhere as well.
Great post. As for the more recent war films, Jarhead and The Hurt Locker are the most realistic movies I've ever seen.
@ Univarn… Dust it off. It's one of the all time greatest, and still has a surprising amount of weight for a film that is so old.
FULL METAL ain't for everybody, I wasn't even completely sold on it the first time I watched it. To be honest,I'm selecting it more for the first half than its eventual climax.
@ Danger… I've never seen HOPE & GLORY, excuse me while I add that to the list. As for EMPIRE, one of Speilberg's most underrated btw, I look at that more as a war story than a war movie. It focuses on the people surviving the war more than the people fighting it. Still – a great choice!
@ Mike… You've left me in a quandry with THE HURT LOCKER. It's a brilliant film, and indeed one of the best I've ever seen…but I may have to let the dust settle for a year or two before I could sub it in for one of these five (ask me next November).
As for JARHEAD, I loved it, but it didn't really have much to say as a war film. Like THREE KINGS before it, JARHEAD had some goodf points about one particular war…but that's the hitch, Operation Desert Storm was so unlike any other war before it (or since) that it's characteristics don't really carry over to the genre as a whole, do they?
I mean that – do they? I ask you because you'd know better than I would.
YESSSS! Full Metal Jacket gets some love! Interesting no one has mentioned Apocalypse Now or The Deer Hunter…even though they wouldn't make my list, they are "classics"
And damnit Mike, rub in the Hurt Locker stuff why don't you! Sigh…three more months 🙁
Anyway, I think mine would go
5. Rescue Dawn (does that count?)
4. Platoon
3. Saving Private Ryan
2. Three Kings
1. Full Metal Jacket
Univarn: "since it's one of only a few books I like." Why on earth don't you like books? That deserves a detailed post sometime.
Okay on to the actual post. I actually don't like this genre…and I'm not going to think hard…so it might be indecisive but the five best films about war for me:
1.Lawrence of Arabia
2. The Deer Hunter
3. Platoon
4. Born on the Fourth of July
5. Coming Home
I'd probably replace Coming Home with Bridge on the River Kwai, but I haven't seen that in ages.
PS. People: Would you classify Taxi Driver as war film. It's not ostensibly war-ish…but I don't know. You decide. If it is, I'd add it.
And isn't it weird that all war films seem to be anti war films? Which is a good thing, I think.
All Classics!! Love it…But you cannot forget Platoon…
@ Tom… It'll be worth the wait. Patience young Padewan.
APOCALYPSE NOW could have made the list, but feels far too mythical in the face of these grittier titles. I also think I need to watch THE DEER HUNTER again – it didn't speak to me the way it has to some.
@ Andrew… Yeah, I wonder that about Univarn too. maybe he'll regail us with a post about it. TAXI doesn't really strike me as a war film…though I don't recall whether Travis was supposed to be a veteran or not.
As for the anti-war message, I think that is a bi-product of our collective understanding of the cost of war. Gone are the days of just rallying behind the cause. Now when when we stand behind the cause, we do so fully knowing what it will do to the people we are fighting, the land we are fighting on, and the people we are sending to fight for us.
It's as though information is the death of innocence.
@ Carolina… One of my all-time faves. Probably woulda landed at number 6 or 7. PS, we're gonna mis ya 'round here!
@Mad and Andrew perhaps I'll write a post about my general eh nature towards books, but you'll have to pester me about it because it's not going to feature high on my to do list.
Univarn: Let the pestering begin.
And The Mad Hatter: Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Forgot The English Patient which knocks them all out. I love it, but I don't remember it as a war film until I put it int serious thought.
Damn, I can't stop…but Live From Baghdad is a TV movie, but I consider it [one of] the best contemporary war [Iraq and such] film.
Some good choices, but I gotta give it up for some films that haven't been mentioned yet. Samuel Fuller, himself a WWII vet, made some of the most striking, no-nonsense war films ever. The Steel Helmet and The Big Red One (particularly its reconstructed version) are both masterpieces, as is Kubrick's Paths of Glory, though that film is generally a drama concerning a war rather than a depiction of warfare.