Brutal War Movies That Absolutely Got It Right

One might call Ridley Scott’s exhausting masterpiece Black Hawk Down a stripped-down slice of history. Though it does little to expand on the deeper context of the battle at the center of the movie, its moment-to-moment portrayal of the real-life horror facing the soldiers in Mogadishu is unparalleled in its accuracy.

The crash and subsequent peril faced by the Rangers is filmed with the utmost adherence to history, as are the tactics employed by both field command and the soldiers still suffering under heavy fire. Though it largely foregoes the politics surrounding the battle, the film’s real goal is to pay tribute to the heroes who gave their lives and to the lucky few who came out the other side of the grinder. In that goal, Black Hawk Down is exceptionally successful.

The Mel Gibson-directed film We Were Soldiers is strikingly accurate in its portrayal of the Vietnam War. It's set over the course of the Battle of la Drang, a three-day conflict in November of 1965 that was the largest clash in Vietnam at the time. As seen through the eyes of both the combatants and the families they left at home, We Were Soldiers is an exceptionally true-to-life film from top to bottom.

From the tactics used in the field, such as firing a few rounds into a bush to flush out hidden enemy soldiers, to the fact that Sam Elliott’s Sargent Plumley only carried a handgun into battle (because by the time he’d need a rifle there’d be several just lying on the ground) is portrayed with a close eye on history.

There are some huge historical inaccuracies in the plot of Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks’s character didn’t exist. Neither did Private Ryan himself. Also, most of the battles depicted in the film and the mission to save the last son of a bereaved mother never happened (because it would have been a waste of valuable resources).

That said, director Steven Spielberg wove in an incredible amount of historical fact into the narrative thread. The small squad’s tactics, the military garb, and the soldiers’ dynamic were all spot on. What’s more, the film’s assaultive opening scene — a recreation of the storming of Omaha beach on D-Day — was so accurate that WWII veterans had to be escorted from theaters after witnessing the footage.

When Stanley Kubrick began working on 1987’s Full Metal Jacket, he didn’t want to make an anti-war movie - as so many other directors do. Kubrick wanted to make a film that accurately depicted war. And by all accounts, the legendary filmmaker hit the nail on the head from beginning to end.

Though recent changes in boot camp policy have made the experience slightly less jarring than the training sequences filmed in Full Metal Jacket, at the time they were shown, the constant insults and borderline-savage treatment suffered by recruits was spot-on. Actor R. Lee Ermey was even brought on board because of his extensive military experience as a drill instructor. What’s more, historical experts have also pointed to the film’s near-perfect portrayal of Vietcong tactics and politics.

In 2006, a Clint Eastwood film called Flags of our Fathers was supposed to get all the Oscar acclaim… then, it was completely overshadowed by Eastwood’s other World War II film from the same year, Letters from Iwo Jima, a remarkably accurate portrayal of one of the fiercest confrontations of the war. 

Told from the Japanese perspective, Iwo Jima goes to great lengths to show the fearlessness of the Japanese soldiers and the thoughtful, brilliant man at head of the army. Played by Ken Watanabe, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi is shown with such reverence that even his real life quotes are incorporated into the movie.

Based on the story of the 54th Massachusetts, Glory tells the story of Robert Gould Shaw, a privileged young soldier who’s put in command of one of the first all-Black regiments commissioned during the Civil War. The narrative is a haunting portrayal of the Civil War, with cringe-inducing scenes that focus on the brutality of the combat and the almost certain death involved in a trip to the field hospital. What’s more, the story is pieced together from Shaw’s own letters written while in command of his regiment.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single war film that gets everything correct, and though Glory has its share of inaccuracies, everything is in the service of creating a fully-formed picture of the world in which Glory takes place. The result is a powerful film that righteously made the careers of such luminaries as Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington.