The 50 greatest war films of all time

40. MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003)
To audience members in love with the sea, this movie, taken from three of Patrick O’Brian’s popular Napoleonic War novels, will rank much higher. At its heart is the Kirk-Spock relationship between Russell Crowe’s fearless captain and Paul Bettany’s thoughtful doctor. The naval battles are an action fan’s wet dream.—JR

39. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (1989)
Taking Tom Cruise seriously has always been a dicey proposition. But you can’t fault him for this open-throated effort, portraying real-life Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, who returned home to Long Island paralyzed from the chest down yet unencumbered mentally and ready to rage. Only three years after Top Gun, here was a real actor.—JR

38. FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952)
This French heartbreaker popularized a storyline that would appear forever in war films: the strength of children to find a way through the muck. An orphaned five-year-old girl is befriended by a boy who helps her bury her dog. They tend to other dead animals in their small, makeshift cemetery, a poetic image that still wrecks.—JR

37. AIR FORCE (1943)
A master of all genres, Howard Hawks tried his hand at everything from screwball zaniness (Bringing Up Baby) to alien terror (ghost-directing The Thing from Another World). When he made his war picture, he embraced the patriotism of the moment, but brought along William Faulkner to pen a killer deathbed speech.—JR

36. IVAN’S CHILDHOOD (1962)
Andrei Tarkovsky’s devastating debut follows a vengeful Russian boy who takes on reconnaissance missions for the Soviet Army during the Second World War. Idyllic flashbacks of Ivan’s early years are deftly interwoven with his stark adventures on the front. It’s impossible to be unmoved by this unsparing depiction of lost innocence.—KU

35. BATTLEGROUND (1949)
If war movies have become sophisticated, critical responses to the illusion of the gung-ho supersoldier, we have this Hollywood drama to thank. Taking WWII’s pivotal Battle of the Bulge as its subject, director William Wellman’s chronicle found room for then-bold notes of uncertainty and fear—even a hint of desertion.—JR

34. PLATOON (1986)
Much of the cult of Oliver Stone rests upon this film, an impassioned and corrective countermyth to the official version of the Vietnam War. Released at a moment when America was finally ready to reexamine its involvement, Stone’s grimy drama—marked by complex motivations among the troops—wrung an emotional catharsis from Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”—JR

33. KANAL (1957)
No proper war-movie list would be complete without an entry from the revered Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, who produced a masterful trilogy that included A Generation (1955) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), along with this Cannes prize-winner. It’s the first film to (brutally) portray the sewer-based Warsaw Uprising against the the Nazis.—JR

32. PATTON (1970)
Famously, this was Richard Nixon’s favorite film, a potent counterbalance to the voices of the protesters and a manly peptalk of righteousness. (It wasn’t enough to help the President with his problems.) George C. Scott is magnificent in the title role, railing iconically against “Hun bastards” in his opening monologue before a huge American flag.—JR

31. ATTACK (1956)
“Not every gun is pointed at the enemy!” read a title card in the trailer, and there was truth in advertising: Robert Aldrich’s WWII psychodrama concerns the breakdown of order between a captain losing his nerve (Eddie Albert) and a mouthy lieutenant (Jack Palance) rising to the occasion. The military refused to cooperate with the production, yet the low-budget filmmakers prevailed.—JR