What is your favorite war movie?

1. Saving Private Ryan The gold standard for war movies. It is seems authentic and realistic in every way.

2. Wind Talkers WWII US Marines vs the Japs in the Pacific Islands. Lots of action. Realistic weapons and battle scenes. Good story but kind of sappy at times. The Thompson sub machine gun is the real star of the movie and it should get the award for best actor/prop. (Nick Cage should have received the best supporting actor award)

3. Band of Brothers This series gets 5 Stars!

4. Flight of the Intruder This movie takes you to the Vietnam war as seen through the bombsights of Navy Pilots. There is lots of good aviation combat but it was awesome to watch the A-6 Intruders blowing up a weapons storage area in Hanoi on a night low-altitude strike mission !

5. Tears of the Sun is the story of a Navy seal squad on a rescue mission in Nigeria. This is not your standard shoot-em-up. The setting, acting and story are top notch. The weapons and squad load-out are very realistic. This is a well written, well made, well acted adventure/war movie! It stars Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci. In one scene in this movie the Seals actually deploy claymore mines much in the same way that I learned to use them when i was in the Army. After seeing the action and heroics it made we want to join up with the special forces.

6. Live Free or Die Hard. I wasn't sure what to expect from the pure shoot em up action flic but I enjoyed every minute. Bruce Willis pulls off the bad-ass-good-guy role to perfection. There's plenty of brilliant action and an Asian fighting chick. Does anyone know her name? This movie has the high body count one would expect for this type of flic. "Yippee-ki-ay muthafu****!"

7. Pearl Harbor Features awesome photography, special FX and action. The movie does not get dragged down very much with background "love triangle" sub-plot. You can fast forward through the sublot stuff unless you are a Kate Beckinsale fan (she makes the non action stuff in this movie worth watching ;)

8. Blackhawk down Well made movie but I don't like seeing the US Army get beat up by untrained, undisciplined, street mobs with RPG's and AK-47s. Why did they put our guys into that Somalia mess?

9. I picked up We Were Soldiers for $1.98 on Amazon. Great movie! I don't know why I had not seen this before. The photography was awesome. They historically told the story of the battle at Danang valley... would have liked to see more squad level tactics...interlacing fields of fire, fire and maneuver etc. and less HCS (Hollywood Cowboy shit) ie. charging straight into the enemy line of fire. Is this historically accurate? Did our guys really charge straight into entrenched enemy positions and not get turned into hamburger helper? The M60 machine gun action rocked! It brought back memories of basic training and that awesome feeling of power when you let it rip on full auto.

10. I did a search for Iraq war movies. There are a handful out there but most of them have a liberal slant and do not depict the reason for the war or heroics of the Americans fighting it. However, this one is very good. A Soldiers Story, A Day in Iraq
It has no filler or by-products! There are no scenes of the wife/girl friend back in the states sitting there knitting or smoking or banging the best friend. There are no flashbacks, no lovers triangles and NO sappy poetry! It's a straight-ahead "Plow Forward Soldier" combat movie! It takes you right into 'the shit' from the beginning and it doesn't let you out until the movie is over. It follows this small company of MP's. They are on mission to retrieve some prisoners and take them back to HQ for interrogation. It's based on a true story and it's seems very authentic. The MPs find themselves under fire and with no artillery support or air support to help them get back to base. They fight with everything they have. Every piece of equipment is totally authentic. M4's--long and carbine models, M249 SAW, 50 Cal, grenades, sniper rifles, rocket launchers (US and chinese made). Tons of AK47s of course.

A few others: The Patriot,

*****
The not so good movies.

Home of the Brave was a let down.
The first part of the movie is all action. The weapons and equipment are realistic. It shows this US Army convoy getting ambushed in the streets. Somehow, and quite inexplicably, this whole gang of bad guys with AK-47s and RPG rocket launchers knew their exact route through narrow city streets and they shoot our guys to bits. (sort of like blackhawk down) Why did they not explain how the bad guys figured out where the convoy would be traveling? Smells like Hollywood antiwar bullsht to me. The rest of the movie is about how the survivors of the attack try to deal with being back in the USA again...really depressing shit. Even Jessica Biel wearing combat gear and shooting her M4 Carbine on full auto did not save this movie!

Thin Red Line WWII island combat...It had a some good battle sequences and too much character development I didn't like all the artsy photography and the sappy poetic narration. I mean WTF?! I like some good poetry as much as the next guy but save that stuff for chick flics. I think they forget they were making a war movie. It's worth seeing but you must fast forward through the poetry.