Since the 21st century started, there have been some incredible war movies released over the last 25 years, and they include a variety of different wars and tropes. These movies have included more films based on the two World Wars. However, while there has been a little less emphasis over the past two decades on movies from Vietnam and Korea, there has been a bigger influx of films based on more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is also interesting to look at movies from the last 25 years because that timeline presents most of the films as post-9/11 movie releases, where the public's views of the war against terrorism eclipsed many historical conflicts. These movies, released since 2001, offer a little bit of everything, from large-scale war battles and intense small-unit dramas to claustrophobic survival stories, sweeping mission movies, and even a fictionalized look at an alternate version of World War II.
These war movies were recognized by the Oscars, often had high Rotten Tomatoes scores, and some were even box office success stories. However, none of those things matter as much as how the movies connected with the audience and the messages they deliver about the horrors of war.
Fury (2014)
Released in 2014 and directed by David Ayer, Fury is a movie that follows a tank crew on the front lines in World War II, pushing enemies into Nazi Germany. The cast was impressive. Brad Pitt stars as tank commander Don “Wardaddy” Collier, with Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, and Jon Bernthal as his Sherman tank crew. The timeline is the final weeks of the European theater, but that doesn't take away the trauma of this war.
The biggest way that Fury stands out is that it reins in the battle from beaches and battalions and focuses on a single crew inside a single Sherman tank. It is a claustrophobic look at the soldiers at the end of the war, wearing down and ready for the end. Fury is a grimy and deeply personal tale of soldiers fighting and dying for each other, although it doesn't try to be anything bigger than it is.
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Hacksaw Ridge is a unique war movie released in 2016 by Mel Gibson that brings a different outlook on the soldiers fighting in a war. Andrew Garfield leads the cast as Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector to the war who served during World War II. Desmond is a Seventh-day Adventist combat medic who refuses to carry a weapon, yet still manages to receive the Medal of Honor when he saves an estimated 75 men under fire.
Seeing a man who refuses to fight or kill, but risks his own life to save his fellow soldiers during a wartime battle, was inspiring, and something most war movies stray away from. Gibson doesn't hold back in his direction when it comes to staging brutal and violent combat footage, and contrasted with Garfield's acting, it delivers a singular and descriptive look at a faith-driven hero that led the film to Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, among others.
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Kathryn Bigelow directed two of the best war movies of the last 25 years, and one of them was about the trauma and alienation that soldiers face upon returning home. In The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner stars as Sergeant William James, a member of the U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team navigating IEDs in Baghdad during the Iraq War. What helps the movie stand out is that writer Mark Boal spent time with an EOD team in Iraq in 2004 and brought their real stories to the script.
Bigelow shot this movie with a documentary feel, which makes the tense scenes hit even harder, and it is all about the adrenaline addiction these soldiers face rather than a patriotic movie experience. This remains true when they return home and find it impossible to fit into a real-life situation again. The Hurt Locker earned nine Oscar nominations and won for Best Picture, while Bigelow was the first woman to ever win Best Director.
1917 (2019)
Sam Mendes directed the 2019 war movie 1917, which stars George MacKay as Lance Corporal Schofield and Dean-Charles Chapman as Lance Corporal Blake, two young soldiers who have to cross into enemy territory to save 1,600 lives from a suicide run. The entire plot is set up around a mission that the Allied soldiers have, but the commanding officers lack the information that they would be walking into a trap.
What makes this war movie so spectacular to watch is that Mendes shot it to resemble one continuous take with hidden cuts spread throughout the film. In reality, there were about 30 long takes stitched together to make it look like one unbroken journey through the front lines of World War I. The movie earned 10 Oscar nominations and was one of the greatest technical achievements of any war movie of the last 25 years.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Quentin Tarantino took on the war movie genre in 2009 with one of his masterpieces, Inglourious Basterds. This movie is a fictional look at World War II and is an alternate history story that imagines the war with Nazi Germany ending in a very different way. Christoph Waltz stars as Hans Landa, a ruthless Austrian SS officer who has to face an Allied attack that targets Adolf Hitler at a movie premiere in Nazi-occupied Paris.
Two converging plots to assassinate the Nazi high command, including Hitler, Goebbels, Göring, and Bormann, at a Paris movie premiere. It reframes World War II as a revenge fantasy where cinema literally burns down fascism. Waltz won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and this is one of the best fictional war movies that offers great acting, fantastic direction, and a wild story that delivers on every level.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Zero Dark Thirty is another Kathryn Bigelow war movie of the 21st century, and while she didn't win an Oscar for this film, it remains the better of the two releases. This is a mission movie, following the real-life story of SEAL Team 6 and their raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where they find and assassinate Osama bin Laden during the Global War on Terror following 9/11.
This took the interesting tactic of showing how intelligence work beats out brute force in modern-day warfare, and while it remains controversial thanks to the interrogation scenes showing U.S. troops torturing prisoners for information, it remains an honest look at the new way wars are fought. The movie did earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress for Jessica Chastain.
Dunkirk (2017)
Christopher Nolan turned his sights on the war genre with his 2017 war movie Dunkirk. This was based on the true story of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation of British and Allied troops from the beaches of France during World War II. What Nolan does best here is show the rescue from various points of view, including the land, sea, and air, with three intercut timelines showing each of these units.
Nolan also creates a masterful sense of tension, going from one week to one day to one hour, as he shows the real stakes and intense nature of this rescue mission. There is also a tremendous lack of dialogue throughout the movie, with Hans Zimmer's score and Hoyte van Hoytema's camerawork telling the story instead. This movie grossed over $530 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing World War II movie ever until Oppenheimer eclipsed it.
All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)
All Quiet on the Western Front is a 2022 Netflix war movie that is based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. The novel was banned in Germany for years because of its anti-war storytelling. The first film adaptation, released in 1930, was also banned in Germany, even as it became the first movie to win Oscars for both Outstanding Production and Best Director.
What is impressive is that the remake in 2022 is just as good as the original, and better in many technical aspects. The story follows young German soldiers sold on the propaganda of their country and then sent out to die on the front lines, realizing too late that their country doesn't care about them. The 2022 release was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four, as one of the most awarded non-English language films in Oscar history.
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Ridley Scott directed one of the first great war movies of the 21st century when his war film Black Hawk Down was released in 2001, 25 years ago. Based on Mark Bowden’s 1999 non-fiction book, this tells the story of the October 3, 1993, Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia. A U.S. Army Ranger and Delta Force raid to capture lieutenants of warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid spirals into a 15-hour firefight after two Black Hawk helicopters are shot down.
Scott takes away most of the mission and just focuses on the urban combat, as the soldiers are trapped and face an almost never-ending firefight with enemies. The audience remains trapped in this small location with the troops watching them fight and die as they await a rescue team that seems too far away. It won two Oscars and remains the best example of urban warfare in cinema.
Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
In 2006, Clint Eastwood directed two war movies based on the same battle, but from different points of view. In Flags of Our Fathers, Eastwood showed the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Allied point of view, and it ended with the Allied troops planting the American flag. While that was a successful film, the better of the two movies showed the battle from the Japanese point of view in Letters from Iwo Jima.
This was an amazing accomplishment for Eastwood, who shot the movie from the Japanese defenders' point of view, and almost entirely in the Japanese language, while showing great empathy for the soldiers fighting for their country. It was Letters from Iwo Jima that was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, while also winning Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes. It is a rare war movie that shows everyone fighting, on both sides, are humans.
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