Top 10 World War II action films of all time

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    We armchair historians love to hear the line “We call Korea the forgotten war…”  “the little-known battle of Khalkin Gol…” etc. and shiver.

    Forgotten?  By whom?  Little known?  Says WHO!

    The lesser known, the better.


  • @taamvan:

    We armchair historians love to hear the line “We call Korea the forgotten war…”  “the little-known battle of Khalkin Gol…” etc. and shiver.

    Forgotten?  By whom?   Little known?  Says WHO!

    The lesser known, the better.

    Well said.

    “A story never before told” is right up there with the kinds of phrases that, to pick just one studio and one decade as an example, were used routinely in Warner Bros. movie trailers of the 1940s – phrases (typically printed in all-capitals in a large font) along the lines as “The most dramatic story ever presented!” or “The greatest film role of his career!” or “The most startling adventure of all time!”  I wonder if these phrases ended up losing their effect on contemporaty audiences, given that Warners – which typically produced 50 movies a year – seems to have used them in an awful lot of its trailers, regardless of what the story was about or how good the star’s previous films were compared to the new one.  (I recently watched the trailer for the John Wayne WWII movie “Operation Pacific,” and if you go by the narration of the trailer you’d have reason to think that this was a reality-based epic-scale movie about one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War.  It isn’t any of those things.)

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '13 '12

    “My Way” is a great film and after this weekend we may be adding Dunkirk?

  • '17 '16

    @hkytown1:

    “My Way” is a great film and after this weekend we may be adding Dunkirk?

    I have this movie on Blue-Ray… mixed feelings about it… I can certainly say its NOT one of the greatest war movies of all time, and despite being the most expensive film in Korean history with great CGI effects, the stretches taken with the story (the entire “marathon runners” angle was completely fictional, which was like half the movie), and the laughable “battle tactics” in the movie, along with the German soldiers with hair going down the back of their necks… there were so many cringe-worthy moments that kept me from enjoying the movie when they played so loose with battles, historical facts and attention to detail.

    While the story of serving in three armies across Asia and Europe was interesting, every time I would get into the story, something that just screamed “hokey” took me out of the moment. I think My Way got a 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason.


  • Greetings.  New to the forums.  Great discussion so far.  I would like to add the following for consideration:

    “Winds of War”
    “War and Remembrance”

    These were made-for-TV films from the 1980s based on the incredible novels by Herman Wouk.

    Heading off to see Dunkirk tonight.  Anxious to see their depiction.

  • '17 '16

    @retrohobbyist:

    Greetings.  New to the forums.  Great discussion so far.  I would like to add the following for consideration:

    “Winds of War”
    “War and Remembrance”

    These were made-for-TV films from the 1980s based on the incredible novels by Herman Wouk.

    I have both those series on DVD as well… very entertaining and fun to watch.

  • Customizer

    War and Remembrance got such poor ratings they had to pay compensation to the advertisers. It lost about $40 million.

    Won a lot of awards, mind.

    I found it thoroughly boring.


  • @Flashman:

    War and Remembrance got such poor ratings they had to pay compensation to the advertisers. It lost about $40 million.

    Won a lot of awards, mind.

    I found it thoroughly boring.

    The books were better, but I still loved the mini-series. I show the Auschwitz sequence to my students.

  • '17 '16

    @Flashman:

    War and Remembrance got such poor ratings they had to pay compensation to the advertisers. It lost about $40 million.

    Won a lot of awards, mind.

    I found it thoroughly boring.

    It’s not really a war movie per-se, it’s a mini-series about a family’s experience throughout the war with historical incidents and events and how it effected them…. if you go-in expecting Saving Private Ryan, that’s the wrong mindset.


  • Anyone who watched both Battle of Britain and Dunkirk understands which of the two is a better war movie

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