RANKING The Greatest War Movies of All Time dives into American Sniper (S) and Stalag 17 (S) for their unflinching heroism, while Saving Private Ryan (A/S→C) and MASH (A) expose war’s emotional and absurd sides. Paths of Glory (S) and Patton (S) stand out as Kubrick’s and Coppola’s masterpieces, but Dunkirk (C) and JoJo Rabbit (B) miss deeper impact despite technical brilliance or safe villainy. Hurt Locker (B-C) wins awards but struggles with narrative weight, while Inglourious Basterds (B) fails by rewriting history. The debate reveals how war films balance truth, spectacle, and moral complexity—some succeed, others fall short in authenticity or ambition. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, we just got through with D-Day, one of the greatest days in military history, so we thought we would rank some military films, some war films.
And remember, these films were chosen by my producer Tom.
If you want his phone number or his address, you know, or just where he parks his car, let me know and I'll send that directly to you so you can punish him for this list.
But remember, I'm just reacting to the films I see in front of me.
This is not my list of great films because obviously, you know, I would do a much better job.
Oh, and by the way, we're going to use this internet ranking, which is S for supreme or superior, sensational, or it's delightful, it's the lovely.
I don't know what it's for.
Then A, B, C, D, and I don't know the letters after that, so we'll just continue on if we go down that one.
Hacksaw Ridge, 2016, directed by Mel Gibson, starring Andrew Garfield.
I liked it.
It was good films, good, strong film, really interesting story.
Different.
I will give it a B.
That means a good film.
You know, we're not going to inflate grades here.
We'll just say.
Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan.
Ah, boy, I didn't like Dunkirk.
Dunkirk is one of the most inspiring stories in the history of the world.
The escape of the British Expeditionary Forces from being cornered in France with the help of ordinary people who sailed their boats across the channel to pick them up under fire.
And it's just an amazing, amazing story.
Only Christopher Nolan could suck the living energy out of it.
He's a terrific director, technically, emotionally.
There's something missing from his films a lot of times.
And this is one of them.
I'm giving it a C. Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, of course, that's an A film.
It's not as great as The Godfather.
Maybe that's an unfair comparison, but it is a really strong film.
It's obviously based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Read the novel, which is very short, because the novel is absolutely great.
All right, Saving Private Ryan by director Steven Spielberg.
They just gave me this to get me in trouble.
I think that let's call this an A slash C, and I'll tell you why.
The first half hour of Saving Private Ryan is epoch-making.
It changed the way the battle scenes are filmed.
It is absolutely amazing.
It just gives you the sense of being under fire.
And like I said, it changed everything.
The rest of the film is sentimental, absent-minded nonsense.
Steven Spielberg is like, he's a wuss.
You know, there's an actual scene where Tom Hanks explains why they have to fight from one battle.
Each battle is important, you know, and that's why it's like they're Nazis.
Kill them.
You just kill them.
You don't, you know, you just kill them.
And the thing is, there's a scene in this where they're nice to a Nazi and he comes back and kills them.
And I thought, well, yes, later on, he makes a film called Munich about how, oh, killing terrorists, it just degrades you.
You know, none of the Mossad who killed the terrorists, who killed the people at the Olympics, ever worried about it.
They thought it was a great thing to do.
They liked it.
He's just not a grown-up.
And so somebody once said of Steven Spielberg, he's the greatest second unit director who ever lived.
That's the guy who films the action, the second unit director.
That is true.
His early films for young people and for children and for kind of general audiences, Indiana Jones, E.T., Close Encounters, are among the greatest movies ever made.
His adult films just have a childishness about them that ruins them.
And this, to me, the action scene, greatest second unit director ever lived.
Action scene is epoch making, fantastic, terrific.
It's S.
I gave it an A, I give it an S.
It's the greatest thing ever.
Rest of the film is C.
The idea when he says to him, earn this.
The guy lost three brothers.
He's already earned it.
It's just a sentimentalist.
It's a terrible film.
Not terrible.
It's just mediocre.
Platoon by Oliver Stone.
Another, I give it a B. You know, I like that film quite a lot.
It's got some really good stuff in it.
Oliver Stone's characters talk too much.
When he writes them, they lecture us and they give these films.
It's one of his best films.
It's not the Godfather, but I say a B.
It's good.
12 O'Clock High, that is with Gregory Peck, directed by Henry King.
Really strong, really good.
I'll give it a B, I think.
It's really good, but it's old-fashioned now.
But it's just a good film about the pressure of leading men who are going to be killed.
So that's really good.
American Sniper by Clint Eastwood.
I think that that's an S film.
I think that that's a terrific film.
And I think it was kind of rejected by the Oscars, rejected by everybody because it proved that all the anti-American war films they had made, you know, Green Zone and Lions for Lambs and all that stuff, that people didn't stay away from those because they didn't like films about the war and terror, which was what Variety, the trade, the show business trade paper said.
They stayed away because they depicted the Americans as the bad guys.
And the Islamic terrorists somehow justified.
All Eastwood does is show that the Americans are the good guys.
And that's it.
It's not a preachy film.
It's not a rah-rah patriotic film.
It's just a film about a hero.
And it is an S film.
I thought it was one of the best films of that decade.
And it should have won the Oscar twice.
Stalag 17 by Billy Wilder, an absolute S film.
Really, really good.
A classic film with William Holden.
It's about a prison camp, a Nazi prison camp, not a death camp, but a prison camp for officers.
So it's more humane than a death camp.
But still, that's an S film too.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
There's one from 1930 and one from 2022.
The one from 1930 is a classic.
It is an S film.
The one from 2022 is good.
It's solid.
So we'll give it a B to A. Enemy at the Gates, which I did see, by Jean-Jacques Arnaud.
I give it a B-.
I think it's a good film.
It's watchable.
It's watchable.
B-, yeah.
Bridge on the River Kwai by David Lean.
Classic film.
It has some slow bits in it, but no, I got to give that an S.
It's a classic, and Alec Guinness is in it.
And anything that Alec Guinness is in, you know, a lot of people only know Alec Guinness from Star Wars, but he is a great actor.
I mean, he is one of the greatest actors of his generation.
Very, very contained, very quiet, but really solid.
And this is a good film and a really interesting story.
The Deer Hunter by Michael Simino, obviously with Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep.
What did I think of that film?
You know, I thought it was a little sprawling, but I give it an A-min.
I still think it's a really good film.
The performances are really good.
And obviously the classic Russian roulette scene is just devastating, so that's good.
MASH by Robert Altman.
That's kind of dated, but it was cool when it came out in 1970.
It was kind of a 60s movie.
I actually think that the TV show is a little better, but it does have some good stuff in it.
I'll give it a, I think it's an A because it's kind of original.
I think that's what elevates it, you know, because it's kind of a different film about the craziness of war.
And it doesn't pre the TV show got a little preachy.
Paths of Glory, an S film.
Stanley Kubrick, one of his greatest films.
One of the best films ever with Kirk Douglas.
Some time Zamachi.
Member of the human race.
Absolutely great film based on a true story.
Heartbreaking.
Hurtlocker, Catherine Bigelow, you know, I got a lot of praise because it made a little bit of money and it made a little bit of money because it showed the people, the Americans were not bad people.
But I thought it was okay.
I thought it was, you know, maybe a B-C film.
It was okay.
I think it won the Oscar, but JoJo Rabbit, Taika Waititi, I'll give it a B because I found it very watchable and entertaining.
It's nothing original in it.
We've seen it already.
It turns out that Hitler is bad.
You know, it was kind of that movie.
Pearl Harbor by Michael Bay.
I liked it more than it deserved.
I enjoyed watching it.
It was fun.
It's probably a B minus.
It's probably really a C, but I enjoyed watching it.
Sands of Iwo Jima, 1949, one of the great John Wayne films.
Got to give it an A.
It's not one of John Wayne's greatest films, but it is a great John Wayne film, really watchable, really fun, and also shows you that Wayne's films are not just rah-rah patriotic.
It's a patriotic film, but it's a film about, you know, a very flawed man who is also a hero, has a great ending.
The Dirty Dozen by Robert Aldrich.
I want to love this movie because of what it's in, but I saw it recently.
It's really slow now.
It doesn't really play anymore.
So I'll give it a B for what it used to be.
It used to be a B, but I think now it's sunk to a C. Patton, Franklin Schaffer, and that one has a script by Coppola, and it's a great movie.
That's an S movie.
The Decline Of Classics00:00:39
That's a really terrific.
Inglorious Bastards by Quentin Tarantino.
It's watchable.
I give it a B. You know, why do I give it a B?
Quentin Tarantino has a habit of making movies where Quentin Tarantino fixes the past.
This is based on kind of a true story, but he saves the blacks and Django.
He saves the Jews in Inglorious Bastards.
I always feel Quentin Tarantino is really making movies about movies, and I don't think that that is that entertaining.
His two great films are the first one, Reservoir Dogs, and that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a terrific film.
It's too long, but it's still a good film.
All right, that's my list.
That's not my list.
That is the list that was given to me, and those are my rankings.