The Greatest Combat Films of All Time

Along with westerns, action flicks and thrillers, I found myself loving the black and white combat films. Combat films are a type of war film which deals intensively with the combat itself. They basically show the tooth and nail work soldiers do in war to keep the American men and women safe from harm at home. These soldiers fight in the air, sea and on the land. There is a thin line between the combat films because they contain drama as well. I did not include such great films like Apocalypse Now (1979), Deer Hunter (1978) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) because they did not center on combat although they included combat scenes.

The Greatest Combat Films of All Time are:

1. Saving Private Ryan (1998) the first 20 plus minutes of this picture is one of the most graphically filmed scenes in war film combat recent history. Its recreation was vividness and intensity of the troops which stormed the beaches of Omaha on June 6, 1944 during the near climax of World War II was hair rising. This splendid film was directed by the one of the finest directors ever Steven Spielberg with a cast of Tom Hanks, Vin Diesel, Tom Sizemore and Edward Burns. The movie was robbed not winning the best picture award for 1998 and the screenplay award was won instead. It was loosely based on a story about five brothers who entered to fight in World War II and all but one was still alive. There was a search for this lone soldier in order to bring him back alive to his family.

2. The Thin Red Line (1998) not as brutal as Saving Private Ryan but certainly quite and visually poetic in its presentation. It was actually an anti war film in the underlinings. The author James Jones wrote The Thin Red Line as a follow up to From Here to Eternity (1953). It was directed by a good director Terrence Malick. The cast included Nick Nolte, Adrian Brody, John Cusack, John Savage, Ben Chaplin, and Woody Harrleson.