6 Most Rewatchable War Movies Of The 21st Century That Are 10/10 Every Time

The ineffable truth of cinema – and indeed all storytelling – is that humanity speaks loudest in the worst adversity. Most great horror movies are rewarding because of the triumph over insurmountable evil (or profoundly affecting for inverting that expectation), and human propaganda stories about winning (whether in sport, or romance, or sci-fi) universally drill themselves into the collective consciousness. So it’s no surprise that, even despite the darkness of the genre’s subject matter, there are some hugely rewatchable war movies.

The crucible of war inspires enduring stories – both real-life retellings and fictional – and the worst days of history have given us some of the best human moments. Prior to 2000, there were a considerable number that would fit the bill, with Saving Private Ryan rightly cited widely as one of the top picks, and prime examples from almost every decade. Interestingly, the shift in the genre’s tone and the way art portrays war means military movies from this century almost feel like they’re part of a different genre entirely than the earliest releases. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of rewatchable ones, though.

At this point, it’s necessary to qualify that greatness and rewatchability aren’t always the closest bedfellows: there are some magnificent war movies – documentaries like the haunting Restrepo, intense re-enactments like Warfare, and Oscar-fare like All Quiet on the Western Front – that are more like ordeals than pure entertainment. All three are top-tier filmmaking experiences for very different reasons, but none immediately draws you back to watch them again, whether they changed your outlook or not. Somewhat perversely, that’s probably more of a testament to their brilliance than a detractor.

6

Fury (2014)

Stories about desperate measures can be incredibly gripping, and things don’t get much more desperate than a last stand against a far larger force, where the grim outcome is already written before the battle begins. Such is the case with Fury, which might as well be the blueprint for David Ayer’s impressive ability to tell compelling stories about mostly unlikable – or at least terribly flawed – groups of people.

The movie, which ignores the pull of larger, sweeping battlefields for the claustrophobic intimacy of a tank, is something like a modern, dark mirror of Howard Hughes’ Sergeant York, at least in its portrayal of profound braveness and military achievement. And though there’s no jingoistic pro-war propaganda here, Fury still captures the magic of human resilience that makes its story so rewarding to return to.

The cast – headed by Brad Pitt’s war-hardened tank commander – is a Dirty almost half-Dozen, with four grizzled veterans (all morally compromised, but clearly as a result of their experiences) forced to integrate a very green Logan Lerman. This is a message movie, as so many war movies are, but Ayer cleverly makes it a messy one that instead celebrates the difficult brotherhood of war. No punches are pulled, and both the aesthetic and portrayal of violence feel influenced by the war subgenre that sprang out of Saving Private Ryan’s success.

The story is a fairly simple one, but thanks to the exceptional performances – with Shia LaBeouf on particularly fine form – and Ayer’s eye for making complex ideas feel accessible, it’s also a hugely entertaining one. And like Saving Private Ryan before it, it’s a rare case where the tone of the ending doesn’t take anything away from rewatching it.

5

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

The initial appeal of Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge is the radical paradox that’s central to its plot: the idea of an uncompromising pacifist thrown directly into war by choice, while refusing to even hold a weapon. The fact that it’s also a true story, based on the life and military achievements of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) is all the more remarkable considering he achieved the Medal of Honor for saving 75 injured comrades in one of the most hellish battles ot World War II. On the strength of story alone, it’s a doozy.

Gibson makes the first half of the movie an ordeal not unlike the camaraderie-building training episodes of Band of Brothers, where Doss is put through the wringer for his beliefs. Garfield is great, but Vince Vaughn also deserves praise as his commanding officer, who is a colossal prick but also manages to be surprisingly funny. The violence of the second half is deeply affecting, and Gibson really pours it on to sell the odds against Doss, and the resulting cathartic joy when he manages to survive and save so many others is irresistible. It’s also exactly why the movie demands multiple watches and loses nothing each time.

4

1917 (2019)

There’s a bit of a running theme here: like both Fury and Hacksaw Ridge, Sam Mendes’ 1917 is an intimate story set against the sprawling magnitude of war, with the tight focus managing to actually underline how vast and hopeless war is. Ostensibly a two-men-on-a-mission story that cuts across the front lines rather than sitting in foxholes, there’s a similar narrative feel to Saving Private Ryan (again, there’s a correlation between that formula and success). There are episodic set-pieces, profound emotional punches, and a story told in real human terms.

The soundtrack (by Thomas Newman) is beautiful, the cast has some excellent brief cameos by huge stars, and there are several key sequences that somehow feel completely brand new, despite how well-worn the genre is. You’ll already know about the fabled one-shot setup (artfully achieved rather than done through distracting gimmick), but there’s a lot more subtly here that makes it rewarding on rewatch, not least in George MacKay’s quietly haunting performance. And unlike Dunkirk, which Nolan used to really capture the intensity of war, 1917 doesn’t feel like an ordeal that precludes multiple watches. Keep your pitchforks to yourself.

3

Sisu (2022)

Despite the apparent fear that anything that celebrates war in any way would be deemed a psy-op and burnt to the metaphorical ground, not all modern war movies require generic fidelity or even po-faced earnestness. And it’s not like Sisu’s gleeful embrace of ultra-violent exploitation movie tropes could ever be called propaganda. Not for actual war, anyway. The deliriously over-the-top bloodfest feels like it was made for Quentin Tarantino’s personal enjoyment, albeit without his fondness for dialogue. It’s confident simplicity as an art form, showing the consequences when a group of Nazis crosses the wrong person.

Despite a 10/10 gore factor, Sisu is bags of fun, thanks to pitch-black comic sensibilities and inventive kills that demand multiple showings to really appreciate the extremity. It’s also a rare thing in modern war films: a heavily violent, action-oriented story that zips along at extreme pace and doesn’t really challenge any grey matter, which there is definitely something to be said for.

2

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Staying on the exploitation trend, with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino proved you don’t need huge battle sequences to make a great war movie. Instead, the auteur made a typically wordy affair that’s unabashed in its celebration of 1970s war movies like Kelly’s Heroes and The Dirty Dozen, where the most important things are the caper and the characters. Like both of those masterpieces, Tarantino makes everyone a caricature, including, of course, Christoph Waltz’s zeitgeist-changing Hans Landa, as if he’s assembling an Avengers of ragtag military cliches.

It’s impossible not to have fun with Inglourious Basterds, because it’s so obvious how much the director was having when he made it. He brought together a ridiculously good cast, allowed Brad Pitt to offer one of the most ridiculous performances of his career, and got to kill Hitler in one of the most cathartic bits of screen violence ever conceived. As usual, the director captured both silly spectacle and incredibly tense, smaller moments, and unlike some of his other movies, despite the provocative conceit, it feels less like he’s thumbing his nose at those he might offend.

1

Black Hawk Down (2001)

You can always trust a Ridley Scott joint to really get under the skin of its audience. In Black Hawk Down, Scott drops the audience directly into the middle of a breathless battle, surrounded by a Band of Brothers-level cast of familiar faces to tell the true story of two helicopter crews lost behind enemy lines during the Battle of Mogadishu.

What it loses in conventional character development (a shortcoming necessarily avoided through clever casting), the movie more than makes up for with its relentless action. It becomes an actual narrative convention that familiar faces or excellent talents are killed off after mere moments: a subtle comment on the reality of the battle without a hammer blow to reinforce it.

And yes, it’s not the most culturally sensitive movie (a long-running accusation of the entire genre for fairly obvious reasons), but accusations of pro-military machine propaganda ignore how much it’s a story that’s as pro-human as The Martian. Scott’s greatest achievement is in the pulse-pounding action, and the magic involved in editing such chaos with such a refined eye should be studied. The rewatch factor comes from everywhere: the cast is so remarkable that you miss big names (often before they were famous), the story is irresistibly compelling, and the action is some of Scott’s best.