Fans of war movies have rooted for such compelling protagonists as schoolteacher-turned-soldier Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan.
The uniquely challenging subject matter of warfare makes war movies a genre like no other. The larger historical context of a conflict like World War II or the Vietnam War tends to overshadow the individual characters in a war movie. But there are plenty of exceptions to this in which filmmakers have explored the war through the eyes of their relatable protagonists.
From the young private who just wants to use the bathroom in Dunkirk to the conscientious objector who becomes a nonviolent war hero in Hacksaw Ridge, the war movie genre has some truly fascinating heroes to offer.
Christopher Nolan’s cinematic retelling of the evacuation of Dunkirk follows three protagonists. The film also takes the perspectives of Tom Hardy’s fighter pilot Farrier in the air and Cillian Murphy’s “shivering soldier” at sea, but Fionn Whitehead’s Tommy Jensen on land is the most captivating. He’s a young British private who blends into the crowd when he finds thousands of troops awaiting evacuation on the beach.
Tommy is a true everyman who just so happens to be the only one in his platoon of terrified young men who survives the opening German ambush. Throughout the opening scene, his primary motivation is universally identifiable: he needs to use the bathroom.
Steve McQueen and director John Sturges captured the resilient spirit of P.O.W.s with the character of Captain Virgil Hilts, better known as “The Cooler King,” in The Great Escape. Hilts talks back to the German officers who have imprisoned him and responds to repeated isolation by simply bouncing a baseball against the wall.
Little do the guards know, while he bounces the ball against the wall, he’s quietly formulating a plan to escape from the P.O.W. camp with a bunch of fellow prisoners.
Mel Gibson directed one of Andrew Garfield’s finest performances in Hacksaw Ridge, a World War II-era biopic of Desmond Doss. A childhood tragedy had led Doss to take up pacificism, so he refused to carry a weapon when he was drafted into the military.
He was sent to the front as a combat medic and ended up becoming the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor. The heroism that led to this honor is depicted beautifully in the movie’s climactic Battle of Okinawa sequence.
Elem Klimov’s uncompromising masterpiece Come and See is one of the bleakest anti-war movies ever made, not for the faint-hearted. It recounts the invasion of a village in Byelorussia by German forces through the eyes of a young boy, Flyora, whose family is massacred.
While most war movies are about fighting, Come and See is simply about surviving. Aleksei Kravchenko’s sobering turn as Flyora puts the audience in his unenviable shoes.
The first half of Stanley Kubrick’s darkly comedic Vietnam War thriller Full Metal Jacket focuses on Private Pyle, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, as he struggles through boot camp. But after his shocking murder-suicide at the midpoint, the story’s focus shifts to Matthew Modine’s Private Joker as he’s sent into a warzone.
Joker is a wisecracking young recruit whose sense of humor is slowly chipped away by the terror of warfare. He survives the movie, but the true horror of war is that he’ll have to live with what he’s done and what he’s witnessed.
Like Come and See, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit views World War II through the eyes of a child. But, in true Waititi style, it takes a much goofier, more comedic approach to the subject matter.
Roman Griffin Davis gives a revelatory lead performance as the titular Johannes “Jojo” Betzler, a young German member of the Deutsches Jungvolk whose encounter with a Jewish refugee teaches him the errors of his beliefs. Waititi co-stars as Jojo’s imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler.
Francis Ford Coppola’s gonzo vision of the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now, is hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made. While the plot is loosely constructed with surreal episodes set around the war, it follows the familiar framework of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Martin Sheen anchors the movie as Captain Willard, the alcoholic black-ops assassin who’s tapped to go up the river and kill the mysterious Colonel Kurtz, who’s amassed a cult following in the jungle since going rogue.
Quentin Tarantino’s latter-day filmmaking has been defined by a unique form of historical revisionism that turns the tables on history’s oppressors. This first started with the wildly inaccurate death of Adolf Hitler in Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of the Basterds, is framed as the movie’s star, but Jewish refugee Shosanna Dreyfus, played by Mélanie Laurent, is its most compelling protagonist.
Under the alias Emmanuelle Mimieux, Shoshanna burns Hitler and his cronies alive in her movie theater. The Jewish refugee who killed Hitler and his top brass was the first of several Tarantino heroes doling out brutal historical revenge (followed by Django and Cliff Booth).
Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is one of the most incisive anti-war movies ever made, tackling the bureaucracy of military procedure and the expendability of human life.
Kirk Douglas gives one of the most passionate and engaging performances of his career as an individual who stands up to an institution when three of his men are sentenced to death to send a message to the others for abandoning a suicide mission.
Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is often praised as one of the greatest war movies ever made. Tom Hanks gives a brilliant lead performance in his first of many collaborations with Spielberg as the film’s everyman protagonist, Captain Miller.
Introduced with trembling hands heading into the D-Day landings, Miller is a perfect realistic, relatable counterpoint to the fearless, jingoistic heroes played by John Wayne. It’s established that, before the war, he was a schoolteacher. He’s just a regular guy plucked from society and forced to fight in a global conflict.
