1. Band of Brothers (YEAH! Just because I liked it better than every other *film*)
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Saving Private Ryan
4. The Longest Day
5. A Bridge Too Far
Why did I put The Hurt Locker above SPR? I think SPR is a fine movie, but I only really like the opening and parts of the end... but a lot of it feels very video-gamey. Tom Hanks popping out and gunning down scores of Wehrmacht soldiers like nothing. Sure, war heroes aren't uncommon, but kind of the way they filmed it in some scenes. The Hurt Locker, though it concentrated more on one aspect, to me it felt much more engaging and intense.The Longest Day and Bridge Too Far I thought about leaving off the list, but TLD spanned the entire Operation Overlord and more and I think that's just an awesome look on things, even if the battle scenes are very dated. I liked what A Bridge Too Far did with some of the movie, I think I played Hell's Highway just before watching, so there was a pretty cool sync-up there. One of the characters in BiA was complaining, "If XXX Corps had just been on time, Market Garden might have been successful." And it was cool to see what actually happened (aside from a little creative liberties)
Why aren't We Were Soldiers, Black Hawk Down, Platoon, and a bunch of other movies on the list? WWS I loved every minute of it the first time through, it just didn't hold up for me the second viewing. I still think a lot of the battle scenes are great, but during watching my cousin pointed out half-jokingly, they're supposed to be surrounded and completely outnumbered, but in every scene, Mel Gibson takes out fifteen NVA soldiers on average, even when he isn't paying attention. Then they had to throw in the stuff about the wives, and while I respect what the director was trying to do, it felt much too sappy and overdone. Everyone is crying in that movie, the soldiers moreso than their wives. I get that, war is sad for everyone, but other war movies did emotion so much better. It's a little hard to get sad when there is little character development, and every battle resulted in an NVA massacre.
Black Hawk Down was a great film. To me it just seems more of a action piece, due to some overdone sequences. A little MW2 before Modern Warfare existed. Enjoyed it, though. I could not get into Platoon. I dug the conflict between the two sergeants, but after watching the movie, it left little impact on me. Dirty Dozen was great. A little MoH and Wolfenstein, but I prefer a little more realism. I still need to watch Apocalypse Now, though.
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