War films always teetered on the razor’s edge—can you depict the madness of combat without, somehow, glorifying it? Francois Truffaut and Francis Ford Coppola have maintained that the very action of representing war risks making it appear heroic, while others, such as Steven Spielberg, believe that any war film is, inherently, a call for peace. Regardless of where you stand on the argument, you cannot deny that some movies have made you see so vividly the soul-sucking hopelessness and terror of war that you’re left different. The following are twelve of the most intense anti-war films ever—and not just movies that depict the battlefield, but ones that make us wonder why we even take that step onto it at all.
12. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Against the horrors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Terry George’s film relates the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who sheltered more than a thousand refugees. Anchored by Don Cheadle’s Oscar-nominated acting, the film takes on both the carnage of war and the extraordinary acts of ordinary people.
11. Paths of Glory (1957)
Stanley Kubrick returns with another World War I classic. Kirk Douglas plays Colonel Dax, who attempts to rescue three soldiers wrongly accused of refusing a suicidal mission. Starring based on real events, Paths of Glory is a biting critique of military red tape and how ordinary soldiers are used as pawns for the ends of their commanders.
10. Gallipoli (1981)
Peter Weir’s Gallipoli traces the lives of two young Australian sportsmen, played by Mark Lee and Mel Gibson, who enlist for what they believe is an adventure. They’re instead caught up in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of World War I. It’s a moving reminder of how the idealism of youth is so commonly betrayed by war realities.
9. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War movie is a two-act gut check: the sadistic dehumanization of Marine boot camp, followed by the mayhem of the Tet Offensive. R. Lee Ermey’s drill instructor is the stuff of legend, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s heartbreaking Private Pyle is not soon forgotten. Kubrick’s film is a merciless indictment of how war wears down the human being, both body and psyche.
8. The Thin Red Line (1998)
Terrence Malick’s film version of James Jones’s World War II novel about the Battle of Mount Austen is a poetic, near-dreamlike examination of the effect of war on the human psyche. With an A-list cast and Malick’s poetic eye for detail, The Thin Red Line is a departure from more traditional war movies, one concerned as much with the wars within as without.
7. The Deer Hunter (1978)
Michael Cimino’s sprawling saga tracks a quartet of buddies from a Pennsylvania steel town whose lives are splintered by the Vietnam War. That Russian roulette scene, Christopher Walken’s Oscar-winning turn, and the unflinching film about trauma all add up to a devastating meditation on the psychological scarring that conflicts leave.
6. Schindler’s List (1993)
Steven Spielberg’s classic is the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who rescued hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. Featuring haunting performances by Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, Schindler’s List is as much about the atrocities of war as it is about the glimmers of humanity that manage to survive its midst.
5. Platoon (1986)
Tapping directly into his own experiences during Vietnam, Oliver Stone creates a grim, street-level portrait of war. Platoon never backs away from the confusion, chaos, and moral complexity of war. Starring Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe, it’s a movie that never provides neat heroics or easy solutions.
4. The Great Dictator (1940)
Charlie Chaplin’s first genuine talkie is a biting satire that satirizes fascism, anti-Semitism, and the folly of tyrants such as Adolf Hitler. Though Chaplin eventually claimed that he may not have made the film had he known the full severity of the Holocaust, The Great Dictator is still an uncompromising, sidesplitting, and deeply human condemnation of war and bigotry.
3. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Oliver Stone, a Vietnam veteran himself, brings Ron Kovic’s autobiography to the screen with visceral intensity. Tom Cruise gives one of his strongest performances as Kovic, a Marine who comes home from Vietnam paraplegic and disillusioned. The film tracks his evolution from patriotic volunteer to vocal anti-war protester, exposing the physical and emotional scars that soldiers bring home.
2. Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
Dalton Trumbo’s dark vision is not for the weak of heart. A young soldier is struck by an artillery shell during World War I, and when he awakens, he has lost his eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and limbs but is still completely conscious. Confined to his own body, he is a human warning about what war really costs. It’s a movie that doesn’t just challenge you to feel sorry for it—it challenges you to consider the unthinkable.
1. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Lewis Milestone’s film version of Erich Maria Remarque’s bestseller is a knockout from beginning to end. After a bunch of German students caught up in patriotic zeal, the film quickly dispels any illusion of glory as the lads get mowed down by the trenches of World War I. The Nazis despised it for being anti-militarist, and it made history as the first film to win both Best Director and Best Picture at the Oscars. Almost a century on, its message concerning the futility of war continues to resonate.
The argument that a war movie can ever be anti-war continues to rage. Some maintain that by depicting war, you necessarily glamorize it; others claim the greatest films make us face up to its ugliness and senselessness. One thing is certain: these movies don’t allow us to look away.