History/War

by talalbazzal-25953 | created - 02 Apr 2021 | updated - 3 months ago | Public

Best Historical War Movies ever

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1. The Pianist (2002)

R | 150 min | Biography, Drama, Music

85 Metascore

During WWII, acclaimed Polish musician Wladyslaw faces various struggles as he loses contact with his family. As the situation worsens, he hides in the ruins of Warsaw in order to survive.

Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Emilia Fox

Votes: 912,340 | Gross: $32.57M

2. Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

R | 139 min | Biography, Drama, History

71 Metascore

World War II American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, serving during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first man in American history to receive the Medal of Honor without firing a shot.

Director: Mel Gibson | Stars: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer

Votes: 594,213 | Gross: $67.21M

3. Ip Man (2008)

R | 106 min | Action, Biography, Drama

59 Metascore

During the Japanese invasion of China, a wealthy martial artist is forced to leave his home when his city is occupied. With little means of providing for themselves, Ip Man and the remaining members of the city must find a way to survive.

Director: Wilson Yip | Stars: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Siu-Wong Fan, Ka-Tung Lam

Votes: 233,608

4. The Revenant (I) (2015)

R | 156 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

76 Metascore

A frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team.

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson

Votes: 874,415 | Gross: $183.64M

5. The Imitation Game (2014)

PG-13 | 114 min | Biography, Drama, Thriller

71 Metascore

During World War II, the English mathematical genius Alan Turing tries to crack the German Enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians while attempting to come to terms with his troubled private life.

Director: Morten Tyldum | Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Allen Leech

Votes: 825,125 | Gross: $91.13M

6. My Way (2011)

R | 137 min | Action, Drama, War

30 Metascore

In World War II-era Korea, rival runners, one Korean (Jang Dong-gun) and one Japanese (Joe Odagiri), go to war together against the Soviets.

Director: Kang Je-kyu | Stars: Jang Dong-Gun, Joe Odagiri, Bingbing Fan, Kim In-kwon

Votes: 12,640 | Gross: $0.07M

7. Enemy at the Gates (2001)

R | 131 min | Action, Drama, War

53 Metascore

A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud | Stars: Jude Law, Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz

Votes: 277,629 | Gross: $51.40M

8. The Flowers of War (2011)

R | 146 min | Drama, History, Romance

46 Metascore

An American finds refuge during the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking in a church with a group of women. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.

Director: Yimou Zhang | Stars: Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Xinyi Zhang, Tianyuan Huang

Votes: 55,722 | Gross: $0.01M

9. The Impossible (2012)

PG-13 | 114 min | Drama, History, Thriller

73 Metascore

The story of a tourist family in Thailand caught in the destruction and chaotic aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Director: J.A. Bayona | Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Oaklee Pendergast

Votes: 244,083 | Gross: $19.02M

10. Ip Man 2 (2010)

R | 108 min | Action, Biography, Drama

67 Metascore

Centering on Ip Man's migration to Hong Kong in 1949 as he attempts to propagate his discipline of Wing Chun martial arts.

Director: Wilson Yip | Stars: Donnie Yen, Xiaoming Huang, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, Lynn Xiong

Votes: 111,026 | Gross: $0.21M

11. Les Misérables (1998)

PG-13 | 134 min | Crime, Drama, Romance

65 Metascore

Valjean, a former criminal, has atoned for his past and now finds himself in the midst of the French Revolution, avoiding a law-obsessed policeman hell-bent on capturing him.

Director: Bille August | Stars: Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman, Christopher Adamson

Votes: 43,186 | Gross: $14.10M

12. The Way Back (I) (2010)

PG-13 | 133 min | Adventure, Drama, History

66 Metascore

Siberian gulag escapees travel four thousand miles by foot to freedom in India.

Director: Peter Weir | Stars: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Dragos Bucur

Votes: 122,019 | Gross: $2.70M

13. In Darkness (2011)

R | 145 min | Drama, War

74 Metascore

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the German-occupied Polish city of Lvov.

Director: Agnieszka Holland | Stars: Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader

Votes: 11,161 | Gross: $1.04M

14. The Patriot (2000)

R | 165 min | Action, Drama, History

63 Metascore

Peaceful farmer Benjamin Martin is driven to lead the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution when a sadistic British officer murders his son.

Director: Roland Emmerich | Stars: Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs

Votes: 293,513 | Gross: $113.33M

15. Defiance (I) (2008)

R | 137 min | Action, Drama, History

58 Metascore

Jewish brothers in German-occupied Eastern Europe escape into a Belorussian forest, where they join Russian resistance fighters, and endeavor to build a village, in order to protect themselves and about one thousand Jewish non-combatants.

Director: Edward Zwick | Stars: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos

Votes: 155,687 | Gross: $28.64M

16. Anthropoid (2016)

R | 120 min | Action, Drama, History

59 Metascore

Based on the extraordinary true story of Operation Anthropoid, the WWII mission to assassinate SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the main architect behind the Final Solution and the Reich's third in command after Hitler and Himmler.

Director: Sean Ellis | Stars: Jamie Dornan, Cillian Murphy, Brian Caspe, Karel Hermánek Jr.

Votes: 54,237 | Gross: $2.96M

17. Colonia (2015)

R | 110 min | Biography, Drama, History

33 Metascore

A young woman's desperate search for her abducted boyfriend draws her into the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a sect nobody has ever escaped from.

Director: Florian Gallenberger | Stars: Emma Watson, Daniel Brühl, Michael Nyqvist, Richenda Carey

Votes: 57,179

18. Ip Man 3 (2015)

PG-13 | 105 min | Action, Biography, Drama

57 Metascore

When a band of brutal gangsters led by a crooked property developer make a play to take over a local school, Master Ip is forced to take a stand.

Director: Wilson Yip | Stars: Donnie Yen, Lynn Xiong, Jin Zhang, Mike Tyson

Votes: 60,201 | Gross: $2.68M

19. Panfilov's 28 Men (2016)

PG-13 | 121 min | Action, Drama, History

In November 1941, remaining squad of Soviet soldiers must stop a column of Nazi Germany tanks.

Directors: Kim Druzhinin, Andrey Shalopa | Stars: Maksim Abrosimov, Sergey Agafonov, Pavel Aseev, Ivan Batarev

Votes: 6,001

20. Danger Close (2019)

R | 118 min | Action, Drama, War

In August 1966, in a Vietnamese rubber plantation called Long Tan, 108 young and inexperienced Australian and New Zealand soldiers are fighting for their lives against 2500 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers.

Director: Kriv Stenders | Stars: Travis Fimmel, Toby Blome, Alexander England, Aaron Glenane

Votes: 15,179

21. T-34 (2018)

TV-14 | 139 min | Action, War

An SS Panzer Division uses a T-34 manned by Soviet POWs as a training target, but the prisoners plot a daring maneuver.

Director: Aleksey Sidorov | Stars: Alexander Petrov, Irina Starshenbaum, Viktor Dobronravov, Vinzenz Kiefer

Votes: 14,355

22. The Great Raid (2005)

R | 132 min | Action, Drama, War

48 Metascore

Taking place towards the end of WWII, 500 American Soldiers have been entrapped in a camp for 3 years. Beginning to give up hope they will ever be rescued, a group of Rangers goes on a dangerous mission to try and save them.

Director: John Dahl | Stars: Benjamin Bratt, Joseph Fiennes, James Franco, Robert Mammone

Votes: 23,983 | Gross: $10.17M

23. The Photographer of Mauthausen (2018)

TV-MA | 110 min | Biography, Drama, History

Based on real events, Francesc Boix is a Spaniard inmate in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen in Austria who tries to save the evidences of the horrors committed inside its walls.

Director: Mar Targarona | Stars: Mario Casas, Richard van Weyden, Alain Hernández, Adrià Salazar

Votes: 12,553

24. The Last Frontier (2020)

136 min | Action, Drama, War

A film about the feat of the Podolsk cadets in October 1941 near Moscow. The cadets of the Podolsk artillery-infantry schools are ordered to take up defenses on the Ilyinsky line.

Director: Vadim Shmelyov | Stars: Artyom Gubin, Lubov Konstantinova, Igor Yudin, Aleksey Bardukov

Votes: 1,871

25. Resistance (2020)

R | 120 min | Biography, Drama, History

53 Metascore

The story of mime Marcel Marceau as he works with a group of Jewish boy scouts and the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II.

Director: Jonathan Jakubowicz | Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Clémence Poésy, Matthias Schweighöfer, Félix Moati

Votes: 8,957

26. Hart's War (2002)

R | 125 min | Drama, War

49 Metascore

A law student becomes a lieutenant during World War II, is captured and asked to defend a black prisoner of war falsely accused of murder.

Director: Gregory Hoblit | Stars: Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard, Cole Hauser

Votes: 55,330 | Gross: $19.08M

27. Last Knights (2015)

R | 115 min | Action, Drama, History

27 Metascore

A fallen warrior rises against a corrupt and sadistic ruler to avenge his dishonored master.

Director: Kazuaki Kiriya | Stars: Clive Owen, Morgan Freeman, Aksel Hennie, Payman Maadi

Votes: 45,607

28. Windtalkers (2002)

R | 134 min | Action, Drama, War

51 Metascore

Two U.S. Marines in World War II are assigned to protect Navajo Marines, who use their native language as an unbreakable radio cypher.

Director: John Woo | Stars: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich

Votes: 73,651 | Gross: $40.91M

29. The Tunnel (2001)

150 min | Drama, History, Thriller

72 Metascore

During the Cold War, Germany was divided into two states - East and West. This epic story tells about their dramatic connections.

Director: Roland Suso Richter | Stars: Heino Ferch, Nicolette Krebitz, Sebastian Koch, Alexandra Maria Lara

Votes: 6,407 | Gross: $0.01M

30. Balloon (2018)

PG-13 | 125 min | Drama, History, Thriller

53 Metascore

East Germany, 1979. After initially failing to flee from the East to the West in a self-built hot-air balloon, two families struggle to make a second attempt, while the East German State Police are chasing them.

Director: Michael Herbig | Stars: Friedrich Mücke, Karoline Schuch, David Kross, Alicia von Rittberg

Votes: 13,326 | Gross: $0.01M

31. Unbroken (I) (2014)

PG-13 | 137 min | Action, Biography, Drama

59 Metascore

After a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, Olympian Louis Zamperini spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he's caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Director: Angelina Jolie | Stars: Jack O'Connell, Miyavi, Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund

Votes: 182,741 | Gross: $115.64M

32. Battle for Sevastopol (2015)

110 min | Action, Biography, Drama

A story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the most successful female sniper in history.

Director: Sergey Mokritskiy | Stars: Yuliya Peresild, Evgeniy Tsyganov, Oleg Vasilkov, Nikita Tarasov

Votes: 13,945

33. Valkyrie (2008)

PG-13 | 121 min | Drama, History, Thriller

56 Metascore

A dramatization of the July 20, 1944 assassination and political coup plot by desperate renegade German Army officers against Adolf Hitler during World War II.

Director: Bryan Singer | Stars: Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Carice van Houten, Kenneth Branagh

Votes: 259,278 | Gross: $83.08M

34. The 33 (2015)

PG-13 | 127 min | Biography, Drama, History

55 Metascore

Based on the real-life event, when a gold and copper mine collapses, it traps 33 miners underground for 69 days.

Director: Patricia Riggen | Stars: Antonio Banderas, Rodrigo Santoro, Juliette Binoche, James Brolin

Votes: 39,751 | Gross: $12.19M

35. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

R | 134 min | Biography, Drama, History

96 Metascore

In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.

Director: Steve McQueen | Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt

Votes: 741,336 | Gross: $56.67M

36. Legends of the Fall (1994)

R | 133 min | Drama, Romance, War

45 Metascore

In the early 1900s, three brothers and their father living in the remote wilderness of Montana are affected by betrayal, history, love, nature, and war.

Director: Edward Zwick | Stars: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond

Votes: 183,084 | Gross: $66.64M

37. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

R | 153 min | Adventure, Drama, War

69 Metascore

In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same.

Director: Quentin Tarantino | Stars: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Mélanie Laurent

Votes: 1,584,315 | Gross: $120.54M

38. The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

R | 112 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

76 Metascore

Three trappers protect the daughters of a British Colonel in the midst of the French and Indian War.

Director: Michael Mann | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Russell Means, Eric Schweig

Votes: 187,672 | Gross: $75.51M

39. The 12th Man (2017)

Unrated | 135 min | Drama, History, Thriller

70 Metascore

They were 12 saboteurs. The Nazis killed 11 of them. This is the true story of the one that got away.

Director: Harald Zwart | Stars: Thomas Gullestad, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Marie Blokhus, Mads Sjøgård Pettersen

Votes: 29,213

40. The Courier (2020)

PG-13 | 112 min | Drama, History, Mystery

65 Metascore

Businessman Greville Wynne is asked by a Russian source to try to help put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Director: Dominic Cooke | Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Vladimir Chuprikov

Votes: 73,623 | Gross: $6.61M

41. Schindler's List (1993)

R | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History

95 Metascore

In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.

Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall

Votes: 1,450,872 | Gross: $96.90M

42. Incendies (2010)

R | 131 min | Drama, Mystery, War

80 Metascore

Twins journey to the Middle East to discover their family history and fulfill their mother's last wishes.

Director: Denis Villeneuve | Stars: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Mustafa Kamel

Votes: 200,315 | Gross: $6.86M

43. Persian Lessons (2020)

127 min | Drama, War

53 Metascore

A young Jewish man in a concentration camp has his life saved when executioners realize he owns a Persian book. Brought before a camp officer who wants to learn Farsi, Gilles agrees to teach him despite not knowing a word of the language.

Director: Vadim Perelman | Stars: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Lars Eidinger, Jonas Nay, David Schütter

Votes: 12,163

44. As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (2001)

TV-G | 158 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

A German Army officer is captured by the Soviets in World War II and sent to a labor camp in Eastern Siberia. After five years of enormous hardship he escapes, commencing an incredible, arduous, danger-filled journey.

Director: Hardy Martins | Stars: Bernhard Bettermann, Iris Böhm, Anatoliy Kotenyov, Michael Mendl

Votes: 8,091

45. Allied (2016)

R | 124 min | Action, Drama, Romance

60 Metascore

In 1942, a Canadian intelligence officer in North Africa encounters a female French Resistance fighter on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. When they reunite in London, their relationship is tested by the pressures of war.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Jared Harris, Vincent Ebrahim

Votes: 169,755 | Gross: $40.10M

46. Black Hawk Down (2001)

R | 144 min | Action, Drama, History

74 Metascore

The story of 160 elite U.S. soldiers who dropped into Mogadishu in October 1993 to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord, but found themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily armed Somalis.

Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana

Votes: 423,643 | Gross: $108.64M

47. Fury (2014)

R | 134 min | Action, Drama, War

64 Metascore

A grizzled tank commander makes tough decisions as he and his crew fight their way across Germany in April, 1945.

Director: David Ayer | Stars: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña

Votes: 547,242 | Gross: $85.82M

48. Kalashnikov (2020)

110 min | Biography, Drama, War

Wounded as a tank driver in 1941 during World War II, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov sees the latest Soviet machine gun fail. As he's also an inventor, he starts making improvements and in 1947 ends up creating the AK-47 assault rifle.

Director: Konstantin Buslov | Stars: Yura Borisov, Olga Lerman, Artur Smolyaninov, Sergey Gazarov

Votes: 4,817



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