Worst War Movies?

Discussions on WW2 and pre-WW2 related movies, games, military art and other fiction.
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T.R.Searle
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#91

Post by T.R.Searle » 15 May 2003, 02:42

For some reason i'm fairly tollerant to new war films. Not so much the ones made in the 60s-70s, maby because i'm fairly young(?). We Were Soldiers, Hal Moore was on the set so how could you go wrong. But still some things seemed alittle "hollywoodish" if I may say so. Also Enemy at the Gates and Pearl Harbor, even though they may not be too historically acurate I still injoy watching them. I mean look at Indiana Jones :lol:, well it isnt a war film but man, come on!. But still ofcourse very injoyable. One movie I dont really like is "Windtalkers", could have been better though. I supprisingly like "The Battle of the Bulge" too in its own way. Maby Panzerlied kept me wanting to watch it :P

T.R.Searle :)

Caldric
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#92

Post by Caldric » 15 May 2003, 02:49

I too liked the movies Enemy at the Gates and Pearl Harbor, both were exciting and entertaining.


Windwalker is for sure the worse modern movie, followed close by Thin Red Line.


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Andy
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#93

Post by Andy » 15 May 2003, 03:16

Matthew wrote:I don't know why everyone hates Pearl Harbor, I guess people are more scared of a love story than a suprise attack.
I like Romances, they just have to be good. The Romance in Pearl Harbor was terrible, it does not even compare to the English Patient. That movie is an example of how to do a good romance.

lilpink03
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#94

Post by lilpink03 » 15 May 2003, 03:55

pearl harbor was the cornies movie ever, at the end my friend was crying and i was cracking up. Josh Hartenett is a bad actor. another problum (other then being not very historically acurate) was that alec bladwin and cuba gooding jr are in it, and they just look out of place, they look like them selves.

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Chadwick
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Worst War Movie

#95

Post by Chadwick » 16 May 2003, 06:31

I believe the worst war movie from history were both versions of the Charge of the Light Brigade (very loose recollection of the charge made by the Light Brigade during the Crimean War) followed a close second with Robert Mitchum in Anzio.

Thanks,

Chadwick

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Matthew
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#96

Post by Matthew » 16 May 2003, 19:06

lilpink03 wrote:pearl harbor was the cornies movie ever, at the end my friend was crying and i was cracking up. Josh Hartenett is a bad actor. another problum (other then being not very historically acurate) was that alec bladwin and cuba gooding jr are in it, and they just look out of place, they look like them selves.
It wasn't that historically inacurate. I thought Alec Baldwin was pretty good.

lilpink03
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#97

Post by lilpink03 » 17 May 2003, 04:10

i didnt say at all, i just said a little.

it was ok, it just wasnt that good for the amount of money they spent on it.

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#98

Post by Volklin » 02 Apr 2006, 23:57

THe '60s films are really atrocious for any German perspective. Also every tank is suspicioiusly American looking.

Though in fairness i like films that are by the book even though they are some patriotic like Audy Murphy's To Hell And Back, at least you know his one-man-army stuff was actually true.
And so far the only American director i know who actually made a German-perspective film (and was pretty damn good too) was Sam Pekimpah, Cross of Iron. And he was a renegade anyway.

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Jeremy Chan
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2001 -- OMG!

#99

Post by Jeremy Chan » 03 Apr 2006, 11:41

You can't really compare war flicks of the 60s and 70s to todays in terms of accuracy and realism. Though of course Cross of Iron is a BIG exception, it just needed sticking more to the book.
If you could count Bulletproof Monk as a war-related flick for its WW2 scene (Tibet in 1943), I'd certainly put that down. Dear me, that piece of junk with German soldiers (SS of course :roll: ) as bloodthirsty murderous Nazi robots. It made me puke; too much of an Indy spin-off it was. :x
2001 was the year for Hollywood war flicks. Most of them trash. Enemy at the Gates was good for entertainment and action, and that's where it ends. Of course, Hollywood just needs to chuck in a love affair in practically every war movie, usually culminating in a sex scene. Such as of course Enemy at the Gates. Pearl Harbor :roll: . Uprising :roll: . King Arthur. Which is really for the pleasure of the modern audience, and appealing to the younger ones. While maybe giving depth to the story, I call it BS and corny. Enemy at the Gates did little more than stuck to stereotypes, and then of course did a reality check and oh! remembered to drive home the point of the evil German NAZI; so the screenwriter has Major König hang Sascha the Russian boy. Oh and I'm very sure it's normal enough for 2 Russian soldiers would make love in a barrack-full of other fellow troops while ze Krauts bombed them. :roll: They end up the triumphant heroes after all.
But 2001's biggest Hollywood war crock would surely be U-571, which was absolute rubbish. Taking credit for a British action (which infact happened earlier) was disgusting enough, not to mention outright brazen. How should the American veterans like a film being made about Royal Marines planting the Union Jack on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima (Or heck, even Soviet Marines planting the Hammer and Sickle)? Or one featuring Lord Mountbatten wading ashore at Leyte, as opposed to MacArthur? Comparing it to Das Boot is a definite insult to the latter and the seamen of WW2 perhaps. Hell, at least Das Boot gave a decent portrayal, justice done, to submarine life.
The machinegunning of shipwrecked sailors was completely out of line as an example of German barbarity of the type you'd expect. There were barely over 5 recorded examples of such happening, in completely different circumstances and no more than the Allied count. No better than the other evil-German allusions in the 'film': "That you must ensure that we will not be taken alive, or we shall be tortured without mercy."
And that comment of Hirsch's: "Please don't tell the other guys I'm half-German. They'll hate me." Has the screenwriter bothered to check the ethnic descent of the American population at that time, and not just that, that of the American military population?!?
Hart's War didn't come terribly close in such drivel. The torturing of Hart was a sticking point, and we have Colonel Visser executing Bruce Willis' colonel. (Which may or may not have been over the top). "Those are dogs you're saluting, colonel -- untermenschen"

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Maple 01
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#100

Post by Maple 01 » 04 Apr 2006, 08:46

The machinegunning of shipwrecked sailors was completely out of line as an example of German barbarity of the type you'd expect. There were barely over 5 recorded examples of such happening,


My uncle was torpedoed four times (the film San Demetro - London was based on one of his sinkings) His liferaft WAS machine-gunned on one occasion. I don't lnow what revisionist historian came up with "5 recorded examples" - then again, if you shoot up a lifeboat I suppose there's not much chance of anyone making it back to complain

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#101

Post by jurigagarin » 04 Apr 2006, 13:39

In my appinion Harts War was complete BS. That young lieutenant fighting for the rights of an afroamerican soldier and calling Hart with many names while the lieutenant was responsible for the ardennes offensive? If hart had known he was the one responsible he would not have felt guilty when he came back. The main thing still is that the wrong hero ended up living!!!

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#102

Post by Potsdamerplatz » 07 Apr 2006, 02:43

I have to disagree with many of the comments here.

I thought PEARL HARBOR, WINDTALKERS, U-571, THE THIN RED LINE LINE, ENEMY AT THE GATES, and HART'S WAR were all good war movies.

I think the problem is that we all compare these movies with the golden era of the 1960's and 1970's when WHERE EAGLES DARE, THE LONGEST DAY, A BRIDGE TOO FAR, CROSS OF IRON, THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE and such movies were made. This is unfair as it is like comparing The Beatles with U2 - both bands are good, but in different ways and they have different styles.

One thing I would say is that Hollywood always demands a happy ending from the modern-day films which I have listed above and this can often spoil the realism of the movie. Look at the second list of movies from the 60's and 70's and you will see very few movies where everyone "lives happily ever after"

My own personal choice for the worst ever war movie has to be "ESCAPE TO VICTORY" - absolutely dreadful!!!

Best regards,

David

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karl stiner
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#103

Post by karl stiner » 07 Apr 2006, 02:46

Christian Ankerstjerne wrote:Kelly's Heroes is a great movie

I like most war movies, and most movies in general. If for nothing else, you can always laugh at them :P

Christian
yes you are right it is a cool movie :lol: :P :P its very funny also the battle of the bulge i don like it much because the tanks are fake :roll: i really wish they make a new battle of the bulge movie with real type king tigers, they got all the computers now in films so they can make one real tiger look like 50 :lol: :D or a film about kursk, have brad pit play piper in the bulge :lol: :lol: and yes the thin red line is crap film

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Brian Ross
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#104

Post by Brian Ross » 14 Apr 2006, 15:26

What annoys me most about Prisoner of War movies is the inability of Hollywood to accept that German POW camps were strictly segregated by rank and service. Officers were seperated from ORs and the Luftwaffe ran the camps the enemy airmen were kept in and the Army ran the rest (did the Kriegsmarine run camps?). Nationalities were also segregated. Yet, Hollywood invariably mixes the Nationalities, ranks and services up, for dramatic effect. "Hart's War" is a perfect example of this. I know of only one camp where the Nationalities were mixed (and even there, they were kept in seperate barracks) - Oflag IVc - Colditz Castle and it was Officers only.

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Sewer King
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#105

Post by Sewer King » 15 Apr 2006, 17:47

Does anyone remember a low-budget international film production called The Passage ( 1979 )?

This was an all-star cast film never released on video in any form, at least in the US, where it was sometimes shown on cable TV.

Resistance fighters help a wanted scientist (James Mason) try to escape Vichy France over the Pyrenees with his family (Patricia Neal, Kay Lenz). They hire a fierce Basque mountain guide (Anthony Quinn) to get them across to Spain, all the while they are ruthlessly pursued by a murderous and elegantly sadistic SS captain (Malcolm McDowell). Fighting the weather and exertion of a mountain passage, they also enlist the aid of a Gypsy patriarch (Christopher Lee).

This was a fine cast but an implausible story. Some good performances but thin screenwriting. Some exciting partisan battle scenes but hard to believe. Accurate uniforms but wrongly set. An excellent soundtrack score but never released. And McDowell makes some near-campy moments that are his trademark in other films like A Clockwork Orange and Blue Thunder.

Although a war film The Passage is like the Italian "spaghetti Westerns" of the mid-60s. The Italian film industry of the time was occupied with making knockoffs of popular American film genres -- Westerns, war films, ancient Greek mythology, and James Bond espionage. Except that this one was a Spanish-supported production. With the abundance of Mauser rifles, stahlhelm and German-type equipment it must be very easy to film "generic German Army troops" in Spain.

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Of course there were many bad WW2 films in the 60s, as was said before. Battle of the Bulge (1967) may be one of the biggest technical stinkers, but someone correctly pointed out that it was a product of its time.
Brian Ross wrote:What annoys me most about Prisoner of War movies is the inability of Hollywood to accept that German POW camps were strictly segregated by rank and service. Officers were seperated from ORs ...
This bad movie gets this one thing correct, that PoWs were segregated by officers and enlisted.

The fictional officer prisoner who escapes the Malmedy massacre has a better parallel in today's actor Charles Durning, who had survived the actual Malmedy massacre in 1944.

I've always been fairly sure that Battle of the Bulge's flame defense of the gasoline dump against the "Tiger" (M-47) column was based on a real incident. An American infantry major successfully blocked one of Peiper's tank columns near Stavelot, by igniting a flame barrier made from the fuel dump along the road. But when we make a face at this movie, we're not inclined to give the makers credit for even that much poor accuracy.

Yes, I know they used scrub deserts for "Belgium". Where was that film location, anyway? Maybe some US Army western training area like Fort Ord, California.

The movie's final scene of the German tank sergeant throwing down his field equipment is like the final scene in Battleground (1977), where Sergeant Steiner casts away his MP 40.

Bad as they might be, these movies are made as entertainment first and historically accurate second, if that much. But we all watched them at some time, even if they make us wince today. They are sort of like junk-food candy bars. You might eat them once in a while -- but you would never mistake them for a good meal, and certainly not one cooked by a fine chef!

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