Miramax/Paramount Pictures/Sony Pictures/Warner Bros.
What makes the World War II genre of filmmaking so rich, and also so difficulty, is that they must walk a thin line between sobriety and glorification, dread and hopefulness, life and death.
The best of them understand that the horrors of war are too big to be contained by a single tone or perspective; nor can they function as recruitment ads or misery parades. They have to honor the scale of the real-world sacrifices while still functioning as stories people actually want to sit with for two, sometimes three hours.
The movies below, whether they’re somber, satirical, philosophical, action-packed or just brutally tactile, all accomplish that goal and then some.
The Top 9 Best Modern World War II Movies, Ranked
Honorable Mentions
The HBO duo of Band of Brothers and The Pacific — while not movies, seminal 21st century World War II pieces of pop culture — and the Clint Eastwood duo of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo-Jima.
9. Jojo Rabbit (2019) – Dir. Taika Waititi
Taika Waititi has made a career out of walking a razor-thin tonal tightrope and that was certainly the case with his Best Picture nominated Jojo Rabbit, which oscilates between being a goofy coming-of-age comedy and a brutal reminder of what Nazi ideology actually meant in practice, while still simultaneously taking the piss out of the absurdity of the Third Reich’s rituals.
8. Hacksaw Ridge (2016) Dir. – Mel Gibson
While the first half plays like an old-fashioned, slightly cornball “Aw shucks” biopic about Desmond Doss, a devout Seventh-day Adventist who refuses to pick up a rifle but still enlists, the second half in Okinawa becomes as visceral of a war film put to screen since Saving Private Ryan, with the contrast between Doss’s refusal to kill and the hellscape he willingly wades into turns Hacksaw Ridge into a full-on martyr story with both heart and edge.
7. The Thin Red Line (1998) – Dir. Terrence Malick
Like most of Terrence Malick’s films, The Thin Red Line, while far from mainstream, occupies a revered place in cinema history for its more philosophical (this is a Malick movie, after all) look at life in the war.
6. Fury (2014) – Dir. David Ayer
As gritty as a mainstream war movie has been since Saving Private Ryan, David Ayer’s Fury follows a tank crew in the final days of World War II who must continue their fight despite the war being all but officially over.
While its gruffness and grime might but too brutal for some, that was the whole point of the movie, with the cast of Brad Pitt, Jon Bernthal, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and Logan Lerman famously going the extra mile by partaking in four months of preparation, including a week-long boot camp run by Navy seals, in order to become as real of a crew as possible, with the main cast even being encouraged to insult or spar with each other.
That intense preparation certainly paid of, as the undeniable bond between the men of Fury has established this film as one of the great WWII movies of the 21st century.
5. Life is Beautiful (1997) – Dir. Roberto Benigni
While Life is Beautiful is now largely remembered for its massive upset win at the Academy Awards — director Roberto Benigni took home the prize for Best Actor over the likes of Tom Hanks, Nick Nolte, Ian McKellan and Edward Norton — and can be tonally incongruous with more modern sensibilities, the fact remains that this is an achingly gorgeous film that took an entirely unique approach to the horrors of World War II by focusing on a family of three instead of an army of millions.
4. Dunkirk (2017) – Dir. Christopher Nolan
The Christopher Nolan we know and love today — the Oppenheimer Best Picture winner and the man bold enough to take on and surely deliver on Homer’s epic The Odyssey — does not exist without Dunkirk, a movie in which Nolan figured out how to manipulate time and emotion outside of the sandbox of a sci-fi story.
3. Inglourious Basterds (2009) – Dir. Quentin Tarantino
The final lines in Inglourious Basterds are “I think this might just be my masterpiece,” which was true of both Aldo Raine carving a swastika into Hans Landa’s forhead, and of director Quentin Tarantino’s career at large, with many considering Basterds to be his finest hour.
Plus, given the way our country has shifted in recent years, watching Nazis get their faces’ carved and heads’ exploded is perhaps more enjoyable now than it was when the film was originally released.
2. Schindler’s List (1993) – Dir. Steven Spielberg
Back when Steven Spielberg was tilting his head toward the stars with the likes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, few, if any, would have guessed that he’d eventually become the director responsible for not one, but TWO of the greatest World War II movies ever made.
1. Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Dir. Steven Spielberg
There was never going to be any other pick. I knew it. And you knew it. Saving Private Ryan is not only the greatest modern WWII movie ever made, but it’s in the conversation of being the greatest war movie of all time, alongside the likes of Apocalypse Now, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Come and See, Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, Das Boot, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and so on.
Beyond that, though, Saving Private Ryan has assimilated into pop culture in such a way that it’s now a part of our subconscious — when people picture the storming of Omaha Beach, what they’re likely seeing in their minds is the iconically harrowing opening scene from Steven Spielberg’s 1998 epic.