The Movieforums Top 100 War Movies Countdown

Watched @Diehl40 's #25 Michael Collins last night, it was a very good watch! The thing I've noticed about the Irish is that even during extremely tough times they never lose their sense of humor. Excellent historical/biographical war film, added to my top hundred at 98. +

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Burt Lancaster = 3
Donald Sutherland = 3
Vyacheslav Tikhonov = 3
Ludmila Savelyeva = 3
Sergey Bondarchuk = 3
Yūsuke Kawazu = 3

Henry Fonda = 2
Sean Connery = 2
Robert Ryan = 2
Deborah Kerr = 2
Ernest Borgnine = 2
Lee Marvin = 2
Montgomery Clift = 2
Tatsuya Nakadai = 2
Michiyo Aratama = 2
Roger Livesey = 2
James D'Arcy = 2
Ben Stiller = 2
John Malkovich = 2
David Niven = 2
Tom Hardy = 2
Gregory Peck = 2
Jason Robards = 2
Shōji Yasui = 2
Nick Nolte = 2
Orlando Bloom = 2

24. Bridge on the River Kwai
23. Cranes are Flying

Ya, same boat here, even though I also love the second half of the film, even if it's like a completely different film.


I sometimes wonder if the promise of Deer Hunter being a war movie is what puts people off the beginning so hard. Like you, the first hour is CLEARLY the strongest part of the whole film. I could have easily taken another hour or drinks and weddings and hunting and arguments over boots. I might rank all of it as the single greatest depictions of friendship in any American film. These men love eachother, but it's also a very complicated mix of emotions they have. It's raw and poetic and full of drama and the notion that it is somehow boring is baffling to me, since their are loads of beloved American domestic dramas that are just as measured in their pacing.


As for how oddly the war elements fit the rest of the film, I think this is true, but that makes it work for me by creating that longing to return to the beginning. But you know this isn't going to happen as soon as we get that hard cut from the streets of America to DeNiro screaming with a flamethrower in the jungle. It's immediately telegraphed that we are in a different world now, and the pacing here is so frenetic that, no, nothing makes any sense. And that trauma that we even feel as audience members, lingers long after DeNiro returns home and just wants to hide from everyone he once felt so close to.

The Deer Hunter is my #23. Love it. It kind of plays out like The Godfather with a wedding and all the surrounding goings-on being the first third, then the next two thirds revealing the violence faced by the protagonists and the change in certain characters because of it. I thought Cimino sort of aped the format of Coppola's classic but then turned it into a classic of his own. Everyone was great in this and I consider it a classic.

I love Braveheart also and consider it one of Mel Gibson's finest films. I don't care how fast and loose it plays with the facts of William Wallace's life. Some films mess with me when they change history, but as I went into this one not knowing anything about Wallace or his effect on Scottish/British history, this worked for me on a purely entertaining level. Great movie.


#4 1917 Forward! #31
#7 The Longest Day Hit the beach! #36
#8 Hacksaw Ridge On point #67
#10 The Hurt Locker Bombs away! #58
#12 Dunkirk Retreat! #47
#15 Patton "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"
#18 The Dirty Dozen #32
#21 Tora! Tora! Tora! In the vanguard #63
#23 The Deer Hunter "Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't something else. This is this. From now on, you're on your own." #25

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The Deer Hunter has some great stuff in it, absolutely, but much of it was mundane and just dragged on. I get what the picture was going for, but it just didn't work much for me. Not a bad film by any means, just one I've never had a need to revisit after the three or four times I've seen it.

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