---
title: "War films"
canonical: "https://film.one/films/genre/war"
region: "US"
total: 185
shown: 60
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# War films

A war film earns its score by how much of the cost it lets you feel, and how honestly. The ones we rate highest keep their eyes on particular people, a starving brother and sister, a colonel arguing for his men, and let the scale of the thing arrive through them. The ones we mark down spend the money on explosions and the running time on speeches, explaining a horror the fighting has already shown. Our shelf leans on the 1940s and the 1980s, and Kubrick and Lean turn up more often than anyone else.

Start with [Grave of the Fireflies](/film/grave-of-the-fireflies), our highest score at 94 and the hardest to sit through, because its children never stop being children. Then [Paths of Glory](/film/paths-of-glory), furious and exact, and [Threads](/film/threads), which makes Sheffield ordinary before it makes it unbearable. After those, Renoir's [Grand Illusion](/film/grand-illusion) will remind you the genre can also be kind.

For US. 185 titles; 60 listed here. Add `?region=XX` for another country.

- [*Young Washington*](https://film.one/film/young-washington.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 33 · PG-13 · 2h 01m · History/War
  Jon Erwin’s account of George Washington’s first war is handsomely built and stiff as a portrait. It admires its man so completely that it forgets to make him one, and the battles it stages with care are undone by a hero nothing can touch.
- [*Lucky Strike*](https://film.one/film/lucky-strike.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 52 · R · 1h 42m · Action/War
  Rod Lurie’s *Lucky Strike* stages combat with assurance, but its solitary struggle gives us too little reason to care. Scott Eastwood is a credible action lead, hampered by clumsy dialogue and familiar writing.
- [*Pressure*](https://film.one/film/pressure.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 78 · PG-13 · 1h 41m · Thriller/History · on Peacock
  Andrew Scott makes *Pressure* a tense, rewarding account of the weather decisions before D-Day. The drama is tightly handled and the acting persuasive, though the script makes its case for professional expertise a little too neatly.
- [*Palestine 36*](https://film.one/film/palestine-36.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 73 · NR · 2h 00m · Drama/History
  Annemarie Jacir’s historical drama earns its force through its ensemble and its attention to Palestinian life. We recommend it with a reservation: the crowded storytelling too often makes people explain what their performances already convey.
- [*Sound of Falling*](https://film.one/film/sound-of-falling.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 82 · NR · 2h 28m · Drama/War · on MUBI
  Mascha Schilinski’s fractured family drama makes a century of women’s suffering painfully immediate through restless images and insistent sound. We recommend it, though its sustained grimness sometimes makes the individual lives harder to distinguish.
- [*2000 Meters to Andriivka*](https://film.one/film/2000-meters-to-andriivka.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 85 · NR · 1h 48m · Documentary/War
  Mstyslav Chernov brings us close enough to the fighting for every pause to feel precious. This is a harrowing, humane documentary whose combat footage is stronger than the narration laid over it.
- [*Warfare*](https://film.one/film/warfare.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 76 · R · 1h 35m · War/Action · on HBO Max
  Garland and Mendoza rebuild a 2006 Ramadi firefight in real time from the memories of the men who fought it, and it is the most convincing combat we have sat through in years. What it will not tell you is why anyone was there.
- [*Blitz*](https://film.one/film/blitz.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 63 · PG-13 · 2h 00m · War/Drama · on Apple TV
  Steve McQueen’s Blitz film is built with real skill, from the firehose that opens it onward, and it never settles on whether it is a fable, an argument or an adventure. See it for Clementine and the first half hour.
- [*Lee*](https://film.one/film/lee.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 61 · R · 1h 57m · History/Drama · on Hulu
  Kate Winslet is fierce, funny and worn down to the bone as Lee Miller, and Andy Samberg is a quiet surprise beside her. The film around them is handsome, careful and dutiful, and it explains its subject far more than it shows her.
- [*The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare*](https://film.one/film/the-ministry-of-ungentlemanly-warfare.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 55 · R · 2h 00m · Action/Comedy
  Guy Ritchie sends Henry Cavill and four friends to sink a ship and kill everyone in reach, and stages it as a lark. The action is clean and the company good, but nothing anyone does costs anything, and two hours of that wears thin.
- [*Irena's Vow*](https://film.one/film/irenas-vow.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 64 · R · 2h 01m · War/Drama · on Netflix
  Sophie Nélisse gives this restrained wartime drama its urgency. Irena’s courage is affecting, but Louise Archambault’s film simplifies too much around her to make the history as troubling as it should be.
- [*Civil War*](https://film.one/film/civil-war.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 70 · R · 1h 49m · War/Action
  Alex Garland’s war film is loud, tense and superbly made, and it has decided not to tell us what the war is about. Kirsten Dunst is the reason to see it; the silence around her is a choice we accepted without quite liking it.
- [*The Zone of Interest*](https://film.one/film/the-zone-of-interest.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 91 · PG-13 · 1h 45m · Drama/History · on The Roku Channel
  Jonathan Glazer’s film about the Auschwitz commandant and his family stays in their house and garden and never enters the camp. What it does with sound instead is the most frightening thing we have seen in years, and we would tell a stranger to see it.
- [*Napoleon*](https://film.one/film/napoleon.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 63 · R · 2h 38m · History/War · on Apple TV
  Ridley Scott stages the battles as well as anyone working and rushes everything between them. Joaquin Phoenix plays the Emperor as a sulking oddity, Vanessa Kirby holds the film together, and 158 minutes is not long enough to decide what any of it means.
- [*Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms*](https://film.one/film/creation-of-the-gods-i-kingdom-of-storms.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 65 · 2h 28m · Action/Fantasy · on Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Wu Ershan’s fantasy finds its appeal in eccentric touches, especially Wu Yafan’s acrobatic Nezha. Uneven effects and an overbearing score make its 148 minutes a qualified recommendation for fantasy enthusiasts.
- [*20 Days in Mariupol*](https://film.one/film/20-days-in-mariupol.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 92 · NR · 1h 34m · Documentary/War
  We strongly recommend Mstyslav Chernov’s documentary about the siege of Mariupol, with a firm warning about its distressing images. The civilian testimony commands attention, although the sombre narration sometimes presses harder than it needs to.
- [*Sisu*](https://film.one/film/sisu.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 70 · R · 1h 31m · Action/War
  Jalmari Helander’s revenge film has one idea, an old prospector who will not die and an SS platoon that keeps trying, and runs it for 91 minutes. The set pieces are brutal and inventive; the last half hour is the same set piece again.
- [*All Quiet on the Western Front*](https://film.one/film/all-quiet-on-the-western-front.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 71 · R · 2h 27m · War/Drama · on Netflix
  Edward Berger’s German-language return to Remarque is superbly made and hard to sit through in the way it means to be. But it has cut the novel’s people down to bodies in mud and added a cabinet drama it did not need.
- [*The Woman King*](https://film.one/film/the-woman-king.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 72 · PG-13 · 2h 15m · Action/Drama · on Hulu
  Gina Prince-Bythewood’s account of Dahomey’s all-female regiment is handsomely built, hard-hitting in its fights and carried by Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch. The script keeps tidying the history and the romance to make things easier, and the film is smaller for it.
- [*Operation Mincemeat*](https://film.one/film/operation-mincemeat.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 66 · PG-13 · 2h 08m · War/History · on Netflix
  John Madden’s telling of the 1943 deception is well cast, nicely tailored and too gentle for its own good. Matthew Macfadyen and a single scene of Penelope Wilton writing a letter are worth the evening; the love triangle built around them is not.
- [*The Battle at Lake Changjin II: Water Gate Bridge*](https://film.one/film/the-battle-at-lake-changjin-ii-water-gate-bridge.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 39 · 2h 29m · War/History
  At 149 minutes, this war film wears down our patience with solemnity and stiff dialogue. Its ambition is evident, but the occasional burst of comic exaggeration cannot make it worth the slog.
- [*One Shot*](https://film.one/film/one-shot.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 67 · NR · 1h 37m · Action/Thriller · on Hulu
  We recommend *One Shot* to action enthusiasts prepared to forgive thin characters and stiff dialogue. Scott Adkins and the continuous-shot choreography give the gun battles urgency, though repetition takes some of the force out of them.
- [*The Battle at Lake Changjin*](https://film.one/film/the-battle-at-lake-changjin.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 36 · 2h 58m · Drama/War · on Tubi
  Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam Chiu-yin stage forceful battles, but the patriotic insistence wears down the drama. At 178 minutes, this is a poor war film with too little interest in its soldiers as people.
- [*Moffie*](https://film.one/film/moffie.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 80 · NR · 1h 44m · Drama/War · on AMC+
  Oliver Hermanus makes a forceful, difficult drama about a gay conscript in apartheid South Africa. Kai Luke Brümmer’s restraint gives the cruelty a human scale, though the storytelling becomes less sure as it goes on.
- [*Six Minutes to Midnight*](https://film.one/film/six-minutes-to-midnight.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 47 · PG-13 · 1h 39m · Thriller/Drama · on AMC+
  A real school for the daughters of the Nazi elite on the Sussex coast is a remarkable premise, and Andy Goddard’s film spends it on a chase we have seen before. Dench and Marc Streitenfeld’s score are worth something; the thriller around them is not.
- [*Quo Vadis, Aida?*](https://film.one/film/quo-vadis-aida.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 92 · 1h 44m · War/Drama · on Tubi
  Jasmila Žbanić’s Srebrenica drama is harrowing and worth the distress. Jasna Đuričić gives a mother’s efforts to save her family an urgency that the controlled filmmaking never exploits for easy excitement.
- [*The Eight Hundred*](https://film.one/film/the-eight-hundred.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 64 · 2h 27m · War/History · on Pluto TV, Tubi
  Guan Hu stages the warehouse siege with force and clarity, but the crowded cast never acquires enough depth. The battle scenes justify interest; the insistent music and patriotic urging make 147 minutes feel longer.
- [*Greyhound*](https://film.one/film/greyhound.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 66 · PG-13 · 1h 32m · War/Action · on Apple TV
  Tom Hanks writes himself a destroyer and 92 minutes of orders, and Aaron Schneider makes that a tight, sometimes gripping crossing. It is precise about everything except the people, and it is over before that starts to cost it much.
- [*The Outpost*](https://film.one/film/the-outpost.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 71 · R · 2h 03m · War/Drama · on Amazon Prime Video
  Rod Lurie’s account of the men defending an indefensible outpost is thinly written for an hour and then, once the attack comes, as frightening and as clearly staged as recent war films get. Caleb Landry Jones is the reason to care about anyone in it.
- [*Da 5 Bloods*](https://film.one/film/da-5-bloods.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 72 · R · 2h 35m · War/Drama · on Netflix
  Spike Lee sends four Black veterans back to Vietnam for buried gold and a dead friend, and cannot decide whether he is making a heist film, a war film or a lecture. Delroy Lindo holds all three together, just, for 155 minutes.
- [*1917*](https://film.one/film/1917.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 78 · R · 1h 59m · War/Drama · on Netflix
  Sam Mendes makes a gripping war thriller, though the camera movement sometimes holds our attention more firmly than the soldiers do. George MacKay gives us someone to worry about.
- [*A Hidden Life*](https://film.one/film/a-hidden-life.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 82 · PG-13 · 2h 53m · History/Drama
  Terrence Malick makes a farmer’s resistance to Hitler deeply affecting by attending to the marriage it endangers. August Diehl and Valerie Pachner hold our attention, even when the film repeats a point we have already understood.
- [*Jojo Rabbit*](https://film.one/film/jojo-rabbit.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 58 · PG-13 · 1h 48m · Comedy/War
  Roman Griffin Davis and Scarlett Johansson give *Jojo Rabbit* enough warmth to make its awkwardness matter. Taika Waititi’s imaginary Hitler is funny in small doses, but the satire grows repetitive and the shifts into seriousness feel forced.
- [*The King*](https://film.one/film/the-king.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 58 · R · 2h 20m · Drama/History · on Netflix
  David Michôd’s version of the Henry plays looks the part, with grey stone, wet fields and a weary, worldly Falstaff from Joel Edgerton. But it removes Shakespeare’s speeches and puts little in their place, and Timothée Chalamet’s king spends much of 140 minutes staring at one fixed point.
- [*Monos*](https://film.one/film/monos.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 82 · R · 1h 43m · Drama/Thriller · on Tubi
  Alejandro Landes Echavarría makes a disturbing, engrossing film about teenage soldiers, with performances that keep its elaborate imagery from taking over. The vague politics limit it, but the fear and confusion get through.
- [*For Sama*](https://film.one/film/for-sama.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 88 · 1h 40m · Documentary/War
  Waad al-Kateab filmed the siege of Aleppo from inside a hospital and addresses the result to her infant daughter. It is the most direct account of that war we have seen, and one of the hardest to sit through. Sit through it.
- [*They Shall Not Grow Old*](https://film.one/film/they-shall-not-grow-old.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 81 · R · 1h 39m · Documentary/History
  Peter Jackson’s First World War documentary is moving and carefully assembled, with veterans’ voices that hold us throughout. Its restored images deserve attention, and some caution: added colour and sound cannot tell us exactly how it was.
- [*Operation Red Sea*](https://film.one/film/operation-red-sea.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 54 · R · 2h 18m · Action/Thriller · on Tubi
  Dante Lam Chiu-yin stages a Chinese rescue mission with technical skill and punishing violence. We admired the action, but thin characters and choppy storytelling make 138 minutes of peril difficult to care about.
- [*The Breadwinner*](https://film.one/film/the-breadwinner-2017.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 84 · PG-13 · 1h 34m · Animation/War
  Nora Twomey’s animated drama is moving and frightening, with Saara Chaudry giving its young heroine a stubborn, believable voice. Some awkward shifts into fantasy interrupt the daily struggle to feed her family.
- [*First They Killed My Father*](https://film.one/film/first-they-killed-my-father.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 66 · R · 2h 16m · War/Drama · on Netflix
  Angelina Jolie’s account of the Khmer Rouge years, seen through a small girl’s eyes, is serious, tactful and often beautiful to look at. It is also long, and it keeps Loung so quiet that we watch her ordeal more than we share it.
- [*Wolf Warrior 2*](https://film.one/film/wolf-warrior-2.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 71 · 2h 04m · War/Action · on Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Wu Jing’s athletic combat makes *Wolf Warrior 2* worth an action fan’s evening. The varied set pieces keep it entertaining, though the overcrowded story and heavy-handed nationalism test our patience.
- [*Dunkirk*](https://film.one/film/dunkirk.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 86 · PG-13 · 1h 47m · War/Action
  Christopher Nolan makes the Dunkirk evacuation a gripping exercise in survival, carried by exposed landscapes, exact cutting and an insistent score. The characters can feel underwritten, but the fear is hard to shake.
- [*City of Ghosts*](https://film.one/film/city-of-ghosts.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 78 · R · 1h 30m · War/Documentary · on Amazon Prime Video
  Matthew Heineman’s film about the citizen journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently is the plainest account we have seen of what Isis did to a city. It loses its grip in Germany and the music never stops, but see it.
- [*War for the Planet of the Apes*](https://film.one/film/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 74 · PG-13 · 2h 20m · Drama/Science Fiction · on HBO Max
  Matt Reeves closes the trilogy with a slow, snowbound revenge story and the best-acted ape ever put on screen. It is handsome, serious and half an hour too long, and its humans are far less carefully drawn than its chimpanzees.
- [*Allied*](https://film.one/film/allied.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 57 · R · 2h 04m · Action/Drama
  Robert Zemeckis builds a wartime romance with real care, and for an hour in Casablanca it works. Then it moves to London, the question arrives, and we spent the second half watching Marion Cotillard act around Brad Pitt.
- [*Hacksaw Ridge*](https://film.one/film/hacksaw-ridge.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 77 · R · 2h 19m · Drama/History
  Andrew Garfield makes a persuasive conscientious objector in Mel Gibson’s forceful war drama. The combat is skilfully staged and hard to bear, though Gibson’s relish for it complicates the film’s respect for a man who refuses to kill.
- [*Under the Shadow*](https://film.one/film/under-the-shadow.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 80 · PG-13 · 1h 24m · Drama/Horror · on Netflix
  Babak Anvari’s first film sets a haunting in a Tehran flat during the Iran–Iraq War, and the taped windows and sirens frighten as much as the djinn. Tight, well acted and properly unsettling, though the final stretch reaches for scares we have met before.
- [*Son of Saul*](https://film.one/film/son-of-saul.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 87 · R · 1h 47m · War/Drama
  László Nemes’s *Son of Saul* is a harrowing drama we recommend with a warning: its closeness to one prisoner is exhausting. Géza Röhrig holds our attention even when the burial quest starts to repeat itself.
- [*Macbeth*](https://film.one/film/macbeth.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 77 · R · 1h 53m · Drama/War · on Amazon Prime Video
  Justin Kurzel’s *Macbeth* is worth seeing for Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, who make ambition feel painfully entangled with grief. The blood and mist can become oppressive, and the verse needs more room to breathe.
- [*Kajaki*](https://film.one/film/kajaki.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 77 · R · 1h 48m · Thriller/War
  Paul Katis makes a tense, convincing war film from soldiers’ efforts to survive a minefield. The cast make the danger matter, though the ordeal grows repetitive and the wider war receives little attention.
- [*Beasts of No Nation*](https://film.one/film/beasts-of-no-nation.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 72 · R · 2h 17m · Drama/War · on Netflix
  Cary Joji Fukunaga’s drama about a boy swept into a West African civil war is beautifully made and, for an hour, close to unbearable in the right way. The second hour goes on too long and the horrors start to blur into a list.
- [*Timbuktu*](https://film.one/film/timbuktu.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 88 · 1h 36m · Drama/War · on Tubi
  Abderrahmane Sissako’s *Timbuktu* finds humour in the men enforcing jihadist rule without making their violence easier to bear. Its scattered stories occasionally feel too brief, but the attention it gives ordinary people is deeply moving.
- [*American Sniper*](https://film.one/film/american-sniper.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 58 · R · 2h 13m · War/Action · on Netflix
  Clint Eastwood’s film about the Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is tense whenever Bradley Cooper is on a rooftop, and Sienna Miller does more than the script gives her. It never once asks who is on the other end of the shot.
- [*The Imitation Game*](https://film.one/film/the-imitation-game.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 73 · PG-13 · 1h 53m · History/Drama · on Tubi
  Benedict Cumberbatch makes this conventional wartime drama worth the evening. The code-breaking holds our attention, though the screenplay’s tidy explanations of Alan Turing leave too little room for a complicated man.
- [*Virunga*](https://film.one/film/virunga.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 84 · 1h 40m · Documentary/War · on Netflix
  Orlando von Einsiedel makes an absorbing, distressing documentary about people protecting a park. Its thriller-like urgency can press too hard, but the attention to rangers and gorillas gives the film a purpose beyond keeping us anxious.
- [*Fury*](https://film.one/film/fury-2014.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 67 · R · 2h 15m · War/Drama
  David Ayer makes tank warfare frighteningly physical, and Brad Pitt gives the crew a persuasive centre. But the writing too often mistakes brutality for insight, leaving a forceful war drama with familiar things to say.
- [*'71*](https://film.one/film/71.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 82 · 1h 39m · Thriller/Action · on Tubi
  Yann Demange makes a gripping Belfast survival thriller, with Jack O’Connell giving its violence a frightened human centre. The plotting grows too convenient, but the action is clear, punishing and worth the strain.
- [*War Horse*](https://film.one/film/war-horse.md) — 2011 · Fi1m 62 · PG-13 · 2h 26m · War/History
  Spielberg’s First World War film is superbly made and twice, in the charge and in the wire, it is as good as anything he has done. The rest is a handsome, episodic picture book with the music turned up too loud.
- [*Incendies*](https://film.one/film/incendies.md) — 2010 · Fi1m 82 · R · 2h 11m · Drama/War · on The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Denis Villeneuve’s *Incendies* is a harrowing family mystery, worth seeing for Lubna Azabal’s restrained performance and its patient storytelling. Some contrived plotting weakens the effect without making the suffering any easier to watch.
- [*Inglourious Basterds*](https://film.one/film/inglourious-basterds.md) — 2009 · Fi1m 92 · R · 2h 33m · Drama/Thriller · on Hulu
  Tarantino’s rewrite of the war is 153 minutes of people talking in rooms until somebody reaches for a gun, and the talk is the best he has written in years. Christoph Waltz carries it; the men it is named after nearly sink it.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/films/genre/war