Please choose the war drama that you like

[lemec]

Please choose the war drama (s) that you like best out of twenty.



Please talk about your choice (s) in this thread.


I know some of these have been discussed, but I thought it would be fun to have a poll.


Enjoy!







thanks,

-Lemec



P.S. there was alot of good movies that I had to leave of the list.

I forgot that the "8" pus the ")" = 8) it is supposed to be ( 1998 )

[Hawksun]

Das Boot has to be the greatest war movie made so far. I think when so many Anglo-American war movies concentrate on the action, with rather stereotypical "clockwork N)z.i" Germans, it's quite a relief to see a thriller, with the plot driven more by the interaction of a group of men in a highly unusal and stressful environment. The fact that Wolfgang Petersen payed so much attention to detail when making the movie (the cast virtually lived in the reconstructed submarine, so their pale faces are really due to lack of sunlight, rather than make-up) helped a lot.

[Heiron]

Apocalypse now is a classic.One of the best movies ever.

The great escape was my favorite war movie as a kid!Nothing special but very nice to watch I would say.

Das Boot is a masterpiece.I had watched it one night.It was very late but I couldn't go to sleep before it finished.Unfortunately my friends didn't like it when we saw it in DVD last year...

I am not voting yet...

[David Mosley]

From that list in order:

1) Apocalypse Now
2) The Bridge on the River Kwai*
3) Platoon
4) The Guns of Naverone
5) The Great Escape
6) The Dirty Dozen

Reasons:

1) Apocalypse Now - It completely blew me away when I first saw it on VHS in the late '80s. Not so much a war film as a study of human madness, this is Francis Ford Coppola firing on all cylinders, ably assisted by DoP Vittorio Storaro and sound editor Walter Murch who both won Oscars for their work. On the acting front, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, and Laurence Fishburne are all excellent - as are Robert Duvall and Harrison Ford in their respective cameos. Marlon Brando is shit though. No, I'm joking, he's also superb. :) However, the film wouldn't be half as effective as it is without Michael Herr's incredible voiceover. Although he sounds nothing like Martin Sheen he somehow fits the part perfectly. Useless piece of trivia: something that not everyone may realise when they watch Apocalypse Now is that as the boat travels up the river into Cambodia it actually travels back in time. This is more explicit in the Redux version which has the French plantation sequence (the boat arrives in the 1950s) restored. Good news is that Apocalypse Now The Complete Dossier (2-Disc Special Collector's Edition) dvd comes out on my birthday. Bad new is it's R1 and I'm in the UK (R2).

2) The Bridge on the River Kwai - Again another study in human madness - and if war isn't human madness then what is it? - with Alec Guiness delivering a note-perfect performance as Col. Nicholson. He's also astonishingly comic in the role, as witness this exchange between Nicholson and the Japanese commandant:

Saito: Do you know what will happen to me if the bridge is not built on time?
Nicholson: I haven't the foggiest.
Saito: I'll have to kill myself. [pause] What would you do if you were me?
Nicholson: I suppose if I were you... [pause] I'd have to kill myself. [raising the glass of scotch he previously declined] Cheers!

Another humourous exchange comes between Majors Warden (Jack Hawkins) and Shears (William Holden):

Warden: [to Col. Green] Sir, it's most annoying. They say, in view of the time element, they don't think a few practice jumps would be worthwhile.
Shears: No?
Warden: No, they say if you make one jump, you've only got 50% chance of injury, two jumps, 80%, and three jumps, you're bound to catch a backache. The consensus of opinion is that the most sensible thing for Major Shears to do is to go ahead and jump, and hope for the best.
Shears: With or without a parachute?

3) Platoon - Grunt's eyeview of the Vietnam conflict with metaphysical sub-text as Heaven and Hell compete for Charlie Sheen's soul. Director Oliver Stone's first-hand experience of Vietnam grounds the film and Samuel Barber's Addagio for Strings lifts it.

4) The Guns of Naverone - Classic Boy's Own stuff from writer Alistair MacLean. Lots of good performances but David Niven's sardonic Corporal Miller is 'Man of the Match' for me.

5) The Great Escape -- Long time staple of countless British Bank Holiday tv schedules. Apparently bears little resemblence to the truth, but when in doubt "print the legend". Lots of wonderful moments: McQueen's bike jump, Pleasence's "I can see that pin", Elmer Burnstein's theme tune, "Good luck", and many others.

6) The Dirty Dozen - Great ensemble casting in a wickedly amoral film from Robert Aldrich. Highlight for me is the war game in the middle section.


*I assume this is what you mean. I can't find The Bride on the River Kwai listed on IMDB. :););)

Imho though: Where Eagles Dare. Best. War Film. Ever.

[lemec]

*I assume this is what you mean. I can't find The Bride on the River Kwai listed on IMDB. :););)

Imho though: Where Eagles Dare. Best. War Film. Ever.

lol ho hahahahaha hehe!

I did not copy and paste that one. there migh be a Bride there somewhere,hehe

[L'Etranger]

Good selection.
I'd just like to add some of my personal list: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Oh! What a Lovely War! by Richard Attenborough and Ice Cold in Alex by forgotton who.
Then there's certainly one or the other movie from other eras (like the US Civil War, Napoleonic Wars or Colonial Wars) that range among war films for me.
And where would you place things like M*A*S*H and Catch 22?

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

I chose Apocalypse Now and Bridge On The River Kwai from your list.
Apocalypse Now is perfect exposure to Cambodia for any layman such as myself. As propoganda riddled as it must be, it is still the only way that the non military public can get a taste of the conditions that the soldiers in the Vietnam war were subject to.I found it abstract almost to the point of psychedelia.The musical score is also eerily submissive, especially Jim Morrison singing "The End".I love Brando,I consider him one of the all time greats.For an actor to portray a career soldier gone insane FFC couldnt have made a better choice.Martin Sheen is very convincing as Colonel Kurtz assassin also. There are so many good shorts in the movie such as Robert Duvall's surf scene.I watched the uncut version last year and it even had a short love affair between MS and a war widow on a rubber plantation. Of course the woman was a junkie, but...when in Cambodia! AN was my number one pick.
Bridge On The River Kwai was my second pick.William Holden was a rivetting actor, no matter what part he played! I dont like all of Alec Guiness's work but he played an excellent part as Col. Nicholson in this one.I think too much time in the sweatbox cracked his shell, but it was still an excellent portrayal of the British defiance towards the Japanese under enormous scales of adversity.I knew that he had lost his sanity when he tried to save the bridge at the end.The movie was filmed in Sri Lanka and I must say it is a beautiful country since I worked there for 4 months in 1983.
My favorite war movie of all time is The Sand Pebbles with Steve McQueen.

[L'Etranger]

Anybody remember Lumet's "The Hill"?
Now wasn't that a film that went under the skin?!

[Mespheber]

One of my favourite remains Logan's heroes, which is a gangster movie disguise in a war one. Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland... Yum! Yum!

Lawrence of Arabia is awesome too.

[David Mosley]

One of my favourite remains Logan's heroes, which is a gangster movie disguise in a war one. Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland... Yum! Yum!

Kelly's Heroes is the film you mean. ;)

Perhaps you're conflating it with Logan's Run and Hogan's Heroes?

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Wrong name but right movie,I knew what you meant Mes.Donald Sutherland is very good as the tank pilot in that one.I remember Caroll OConnor as the general in it to unless Im mistaken.I also remember them stealing gold bars from a bank with a tiger tank.(correct?) It is a pretty good movie, right up there with The Big Red One.

[Count_Brass]

Kelley's Heros.
But that's not a war drama. It is a war comedy. I know that is a weird term, a weird genre in itself, but as long as people can make money out of it.
I liked it, nevertheless.

[lemec]

that's a very cool Avatar, Count Brass. :)

[Madrigal Rose]

1) Das Boot
Stunning movie. This one just blows me away every time I see it. So well done. And the soundtrack is awesome, too.

2) Bridge On the River Kwai
Can't really add anything to what's been said.

3) Dirty Dozen
What a concept-

4) Guns Of Navarone
Gregory Peck- what a guy!

Since this is poll is what we 'like best', that's what I picked. Obviously Apocalypse Now is a great movie-I saw it for the first time in a theater when it was re-released- amazing. Not something I could watch more than once, though.
Not on the list and favorites of mine:
Hell In the Pacific with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. A must-see.
Twelve O'Clock High Again, Gregory Peck is amazing.

[lemec]

Hell In the Pacific is a weird one! haha -and very,very interesting and good.


P.S.

If I had to narrow it down to four, I tend to like most of these, I would choose:


All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

-excellent war movie from the point of view of the Infantry of World War One.


The Longest Day (1962) -showed the D-Day Invasion really well. It is a good historical movie.


A Bridge Too Far (1977)

-like The Longest Day only in colour. A good representation of the failed Market-Garden mission. (plus they managed to get Sean Connery and Gene Hackmen in there,haha)




Full Metal Jacket (1987)


Stanley Kubrick, one of the best directors of all time. It is a shame he did not get to make more films. I saw a special on him and he was putting incredible research into a project that he never began.

This movie seemed to be the best one to show the reality of combat.

The training phase at the beginning is excellent. I'm told it is the perfect representation of the actual military boot camp.