70 Best War Movies of All Time (and Where to Watch Them Online)

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The War movie is a genre unto itself. It is defined by World War II veteran and legendary American filmmaker, Sam Fuller as a movie that "makes a viewer feel war." This guide provides you with 70 of the best war movies to watch and where you can stream them using some of the most popular streaming services in the United States like Netflix, Prime Video and Max. You can also browse using filters for age rating, release year, IMDb rating and more.

Battles, trenches, gruesome injuries, and heroic narratives are the timeless hallmarks of a war movie. Some depictions of war in this list however take an unusual approach to exploring the theme. Movies such as Pan’s Labyrinth don’t focus on armies or military set-pieces as much as the subtle psychological horrors of war on a whole society. Some films are direct accurate recreations of famous conflicts like Dunkirk while others take war as an object of satire such as Dr. Strangelove.

Where can I watch the best War movies?

Some of the most famous wars represented in this list include the American Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the 1982 Lebanon War, the Vietnam War, the Algerian War, the Irish War of Independence, and the Iraq War. This list is non-exhaustive, in no particular order, and features the best war movies of all time and where to watch them. 

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  1. Grave of the Fireflies

    Grave of the Fireflies

    1988

    IMDB 8.5 (304k)

    #1

    In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.

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  2. The Battle of Algiers

    #2

    Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.

  3. Henry V

    Henry V

    1989

    IMDB 7.5 (31k)

    #3

    Gritty adaption of William Shakespeare's play about the English King's bloody conquest of France.

  4. Schindler's List

    Schindler's List

    1993

    IMDB 9.0 (1m)

    #4

    The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

  5. Apocalypse Now

    Apocalypse Now

    1979

    IMDB 8.4 (644k)

    #5

    At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

  6. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

    #6

    After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop the nuclear strike.

  7. Ivan's Childhood

    Ivan's Childhood

    1962

    IMDB 8.0 (40k)

    #7

    In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.

  8. Army of Shadows

    Army of Shadows

    1969

    IMDB 8.1 (26k)

    #8

    Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.

  9. Son of Saul

    Son of Saul

    2015

    IMDB 7.4 (52k)

    #9

    In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son.

  10. All Quiet on the Western Front

    #10

    When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during World War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

  11. The Great Dictator

    The Great Dictator

    1940

    IMDB 8.4 (238k)

    #11

    Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.

  12. Paths of Glory

    Paths of Glory

    1957

    IMDB 8.4 (213k)

    #12

    A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.

  13. Das Boot

    Das Boot

    1981

    IMDB 8.4 (265k)

    #13

    A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.

  14. Casablanca

    Casablanca

    1943

    IMDB 8.5 (608k)

    #14

    In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

  15. Waltz with Bashir

    Waltz with Bashir

    2008

    IMDB 8.0 (60k)

    #15

    An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

  16. Life Is Beautiful

    Life Is Beautiful

    1997

    IMDB 8.6 (735k)

    #16

    A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.

  17. The 317th Platoon

    The 317th Platoon

    1965

    IMDB 7.3 (1k)

    #17

    In Laos, 1954, eight days before the french defeat in the Indochina war, the 317th platoon – four french soldiers and 41 laotian combatants – has been ordered to leave its outpost and to retreat for the plains of Diên Biên Phu, where the french army is getting stucked. Led by the inexperienced and idealistic sous-lieutenant Torrens, fresh out of the military academy, and by adjutant Willsdorf, a WWII veteran of the Werhmacht, the group must cross 150 kilometers of jungle. But dripping rainwater, hostile nature, and the Viêt-minh ambushes expose them to constant danger.

  18. The Bridge on the River Kwai

    #18

    The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

  19. Patton

    Patton

    1970

    IMDB 7.9 (108k)

    #19

    "Patton" tells the tale of General George S. Patton, famous tank commander of World War II. The film begins with Patton's career in North Africa and progresses through the invasion of Germany and the fall of the Third Reich. Side plots also speak of Patton's numerous faults such his temper and habit towards insubordination.

  20. Ran

    Ran

    1985

    IMDB 8.2 (136k)

    #20

    With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.