Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward. On th-ink.co.uk Harry will be writing a series of posts in which he will be sharing his opinions on things he has watched.
Last Sunday was Remembrance Day and World War One is now over a hundred years old. Yet we’re still obsessed with war. War films, that is. Not only does war keep marching across our screens in a variety of guises but we love revisiting the classics and rightly so. War is one of my favourite film genres. You’re guaranteed extraordinary action and emotion when you thrust characters into extreme situations. So here’s a countdown of what I believe are the five best war movies and no, Saving Private Ryan did not make the list.
5. All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930
The power of this film is evident due to the fact that it was censored while troops were mobilising for WW2. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel (which I still have to read), this is a classic story of an idealistic young boy going off to war and getting traumatised and, bar Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, this may be the finest WW1 movie. Not only is it extraordinary for being an American movie about German soldiers but it is beautifully shot and it foreshadows a lot of the anti-war sentiments of modern war films.
4. Cross of Iron, 1977
Film director Sam Peckinpah is a favourite of mine and is notorious for breaking the late 60s/early 70s film violence barrier in such intense classics as the Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs. His one war film is equally violent but like his best films, under the action there is surprising depth. Also casting American actors as German soldiers, the story focuses on a German squad on the Russian front during WW2 and an ideological battle playing out between a disillusioned but caring sergeant (James Coburn) and an ambitious but cowardly captain. This epic wins for depicting relentless action together with the emotional turmoil of war.
3. Come and See (Idi i Smotri), 1985
A Russian film with the familiar storyline of a boy going off to war only to discover how horrible it is. This is, however, still one of the most unique war films you will ever see. It is an artistic, beautifully shot emotional bruiser on how much it sucked to be a Russian peasant during WW2. It is notable for depicting more of the common people’s suffering during war rather than just the soldiers and for getting such extraordinary emotional performances from its young main actors. Be warned, this film will leave you shaken.
2. Full Metal Jacket, 1987
As well as being revered for making The Shining and Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick has directed a handful of the greatest war films. There’s the heartbreaking drama of Paths of Glory and the satiric comedy of Dr Strangelove. But nowhere is his vision of war more savage or bitter than in his penultimate movie Full Metal Jacket. Dealing with the Vietnam war, his depiction of young soldiers is one of the most realistic and biting I’ve ever seen. His characters get kicks out of prostitutes and insulting each other with crude slangs, yet even Kubrick can get humanity out of them when they’re pushed to their limits during the Tet Offensive in Hue City. This war film is unique for spending half its length in the training camp, where young American boys are shaved and broken down psychologically to be rebuilt as killing machines by the unbelievably foul-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (a monstrous performance by ex-marine R. Lee Ermey). This movie also boasts a cracking soundtrack, including Trashmen’s Surfin’ Bird (way before Peter Griffin tormented everyone with it in Family Guy).
1. Apocalypse Now, 1979
Another film about the Vietnam war with a great soundtrack. But while Full Metal Jacket is your punk war movie, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse is your prog-rock war movie: a steaming three hour drug-fuelled, hallucinatory, nightmarish odyssey into humanity’s heart of darkness. But this is what makes it such a good movie, that and the fact that it’s shot like a work of art. As well as boasting a gallery of magnificent actors like Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando and Dennis Hopper (even Harrison Ford and Laurence Fishburne in small roles) and killer lines that have cemented themselves into popular culture like ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ and ‘the horror… the horror’ (taken straight from the novella Heart of Darkness the film was based on, giving a dread history to the line), this epic succeeded in depicting all the faces of war within its rambling episodic plot of an American captain voyaging upriver into Cambodia to assassinate rogue colonel Kurtz. There’s action (helicopter attack set to Ride of the Valkyries), black humour, tragedy and of course the horror. This film also succeeds in rising above simply depicting the absurd nightmare of war and tries to answer the ancient philosophical question of what to do about evil. It’s incredible that such an ambitious, philosophical nightmare got made and came out looking perfect, especially regarding the horrendous problems that plagued production that led to their own documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. I feel Coppola should be more revered for this than his Godfather movies.