The history of humanity is, tragically, also a history of war. The conflicts in which countries and cultures take arms against one another have shaped the map of the world and repeatedly redefined our place within it, and so it only makes sense that a significant number of films have been made about soldiers, about their battles, and about the consequences.
But it’s one thing to make a movie about a war with the benefit of hindsight. Modern war movies, made during or only shortly after the conflicts they dramatize, are trickier. Filmmakers can’t always see the forest for the trees, and frequently fall back on rah-rah action dynamics and propagandistic simplicity. And while some of the best modern war movies do those things too, the most interesting examples try to say something salient about the people embroiled in these battles, and explore each war from a different, illuminating angle.
These are the films that stand out from the pack, that capture the sensation of modern war and - hopefully, but not always - have something poignant to say about it as well. They’re the best of the best modern war films.
Ridley Scott captures the intensity of a prolonged firefight like lightning in a bottle. Black Hawk Down features an incredible ensemble cast as soldiers either trapped in a deadly firefight, or as those desperately trying to rescue their comrades. High-pressure sound design and ingenious editing make the unbelievably complicated action easy to follow, and keep our focus on the life-or-death struggle of the here-and-now.
War is hell. But some people fit right in. Kathryn Bigelow’s suspenseful, challenging The Hurt Locker stars Jeremy Renner as the head of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in the Iraq War, who has learned to thrive on the harrowing stresses of war. This Oscar-winning Best Picture paints a vivid portrait of the individuals who no longer understand how to live any other way, punctuated with scenes of intense bomb disposals that will make you chew your nails down to the skin.
Jarhead sees a surly Jake Gyllenhaal trained to kill his enemy, and to define himself by the death of his enemy - then denies him every opportunity to fulfill that purpose. It’s a frustrating, bitter motion picture, and that’s very much by design. Jarhead questions the expectation of violence, both on the part of the characters and the audience, and is one of the most challenging modern war movies as a result.
It’s can be difficult to make a modern war film with a critical sensibility, given the closeness of the conflict portrayed. So it was striking when David O. Russell’s Three Kings took that plunge in 1999, depicting the Persian Gulf War as a place where American myths of heroic violence and superiority are sharply subverted. George Clooney, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg and Spike Jonze star as soldiers who go AWOL to steal gold, come face-to-face with their own failings, and eventually emerge as actual, albeit unlikely, heroes.
After winning an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow took on an even more ambitious topic: the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which hadn’t come to a conclusion when the film began development. History would eventually give the film an exciting finale but the real story here is of a CIA analyst, played by Jessica Chastain, who dedicates her career to the seemingly impossible task of finding a man who exists outside the parameters of surveillance. Zero Dark Thirty explores people who undertake impossible tasks because someone has to, and what happens when their mission approaches an end.
Those were our picks for the Best Modern War Films, let us know your favorites in the comments.
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