If you've already binged your way through our picks of the best TV shows on Amazon Prime, then it's time to get stuck into our film recommendations below.
With a war movie, you know exactly what you’re getting. Suffering, cruelty, sadness, heroism and ethical dilemmas aplenty. Band of Brothers (2001) — even though it’s not a movie but a 10-part series from Tom Hanks set during World War II — is perhaps the most comprehensive piece of storytelling answering the question, “So what is war actually like?”
Because the truth is, most of us will never experience war. And one way of empathising with those that have and do and will, is by watching really well-made and well-told stories from the battlefields of history.
Every war is terrible, but a war that utilises children, brainwashes them and trains them to kill? That is, most certainly, worse. With a breakout role for Ghanaian first-time actor Abraham Attah and an incredible performance by Idris Elba as the austere Commandant, Cary Joji Fukanaga’s Beasts of No Nation is a harrowing tale of darkness that takes the viewer into the heart of the story of a child soldier in an unnamed African country. WATCH
Perhaps one of the most recognisable war movies of all time, ironically, Apocalypse Now wasn’t Francis Ford Coppola’s most critically renowned war movie. Patton (1971), the biographical drama of General George S. Patton, won Coppola his first Oscar ever (for screenwriting, shared with Edmund H. North). But Apocalypse Now did win best cinematography and best sound. With an all-star cast including Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford and Dennis Hopper, the film is an adaptation of an 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, but set during the Vietnam War where a U.S. Army officer (Sheen) is tasked with the assassination of a renegade Colonel (Brando) whose ego has outgrown his rank. WATCH
Shot in Black Hills, South Dakota — historically Native American land — and using mostly First Nations cast members, Crazy Horse is one of a very few films that aims to create authenticity and fairness when telling American Indians’ stories. Starring Michael Greyeyes and Irene Bedard (best known as the voice for Disney’s Pocahontas), the film is based on the true story of Crazy Horse (Greyeyes), a Lakota warrior who fought back against the encroachment of American Colonials in the late 19th century. WATCH
Though there are few scenes of actual “war” in Jarhead, this is one of those films about conflict that really digs deep into the psychology of soldiers. The story, adapted from the memoir of U.S. Marine sniper, Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), takes place during Operation Desert Storm (one of the codenames for The Gulf War in the early 1990s) as the battle between American/Kuwait forces and Iraq wages on and Swofford’s girlfriend is back at home, possibly cheating on him. WATCH
Another Sam Mendes film, 1917 was praised up and down for its innovative filmmaking techniques (it was made to look like it was shot in only one take), its visceral scenes splattered with real-time special effects and its on-point acting. George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman lead the story as two low-ranking British officers in World War I trenches who are tasked with getting a message across and through and around enemy territory in order to stop thousands of other soldiers from walking into a death trap. WATCH
The Hurt Locker is one of the few war films directed by a woman. Kathryn Bigelow won the best directing and best picture Oscars for it, and then went on to make Zero Dark Thirty, another war film. The Hurt Locker was also when everyone started taking Jeremy Renner seriously. Renner plays a Staff Sargent whose maverick manoeuvres don’t land well during the Iraq War as he works with a small bomb squad to disarm life-threatening traps for his fellow soldiers and civilians. WATCH
Less than a decade after his father starred in a movie about the atrocities of Vietnam, Charlie Sheen was starring — alongside Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Johnny Depp, Forest Whitaker and others — in one, too. Platoon is written and directed by Oliver Stone and follows a group of young men as they navigate the immoralities of the war they’re a part of. Where Apocalypse Now focuses on the bigger picture of war through a targeted story, Platoon hones in on soldiers’ singular loss of innocence that came with the Vietnam War. WATCH
At the time, Daniel Day Lewis – though an Academy Award-winning actor already — hadn’t played anything close to the hardened trapper, Hawkeye, raised by Native Americans in The Last of the Mohicans. Clearly, the man had potential. The story, directed by Michael Mann and adapted from both the 1826 novel and the 1936 film of the same names, is set against the backdrop of the French and Indian War (which is actually the British and the French fighting over what was in fact Native American territories). Hawkeye is charged with protecting a British Colonel’s daughter as they navigate the war-torn land to safety. Note: the score will have you humming for days. WATCH
After this movie came out, everyone in the world found out who William Wallace was. Except that, well, that’s not who William Wallace was at all. Not much is actually known about the Scottish warrior, and Robert the Bruce, who in the film is portrayed as his enemy, is actually a hero in the fight for Scottish independence. But, Braveheart, starring a charismatic Mel Gibson, (who also happened to direct this one) is a damn entertaining movie about one of the many battles fought in a centuries-long war for freedom, even if it is mostly fiction. WATCH
Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, those two names alone say enough about a war film. Specifically, that it’s probably going to be epic. Like 1917, this film won a bunch of below-the-line Oscars (editing, sound, sound effects, cinematography) and also like 1917 — though, let’s remember who did it first — this movie is predicated on a nearly impossible task as its major plot through line. Captain Miller (Hanks) is tasked with rescuing a paratrooper who landed behind enemy lines and is one of four brothers to remain alive during World War II’s Normandy Invasion. Get that boy home to his mum! WATCH
Glory is the all-important tale of the first black regiment of the Union Army during America’s Civil War. Led by the white Colonel Shaw (Matthew Broderick), he and his African American soldiers (including Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington, who won his first Oscar for this supporting role) not only have to fight a way for their very freedom, but they have to endure harsh racism from both their enemy, the Confederates, and their own Unionists. WATCH
For however many films that depict the battles of World War II, there is probably an equal amount that depict the Holocaust—the epicentre of the atrocities of that war. The film — directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the book by Thomas Keneally — goes down in history as one of the most important pieces of media about the Holocaust since its release prompted more survivors to come out with their stories. It also won seven Oscars. Starring Liam Neeson in the title role alongside Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, the tale of Oskar Schindler and his efforts to save Jewish workers in his Krakow-based factory by sneaking them out of occupied Poland. WATCH
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