I said in my opinion. And no I mean as in an actual event that happened. An example of my definition of War movie would be Enemy at the Gates. Most of what they showed in that film happened. There was an actual sniper duel during the Battle of Stalingrad and both of the names in the film are their actual names(I read alot about WW2).The Russians were notorious for using human tidal waves and shooting their own men for retreating. If the Russians launched a 300 man assult against a fortified Nazi position, and all 300 of them died, then they would find 300 more men and have the, attack the same position.
Now they really need to make a movie about the Battle of the Hutgen Forest. Men were involved at Omaha said that the Hurtgen was even worse.
Oh sorry I misunderstood, yes I know about the sniper duel, I wouæld ahve loved it if they showd the battles that took place on the hill in Stalingrad(Can't remeber the name, surely you must know it) you know the hill where fist of course the Russian held, then the germans came to Stalingrad, and took most of Stalingrad, but the Russians took this hill back, but then the Germans came back and took it from the russians again, the teh russians came once more, and the germans got pissed,a nd took it back, but the russians then again came back for it, and so on and so forth, but what was the name of this hill i speak of I just cant remember it, also i read about this crazy bad ass russian that single handed killed 1 or maybe 2 german squads in this house, what was the name of that dude?
The hill was called Mamayev Kurgan and if you go their today, you canactually see bits of bone sticking out of the ground. I forgot the name of the man you mentioned. The city is now called Voldograd( the soviet people despised Stalin and changed the name to Voldograd as soon as they could).
I thought that the Longgest Day was a pretty good flick, but my earlier comment about its presentation of Omaha beach still stands. Of course that's partially becuase it was made in 1962, an era when many were denied the true scope of what happened during the war and plus the weapons don't even sound right. (I know, I have too muchfree time on my hands.)
I loved 'A Bridge Too Far' though, it has the best cast ever assembled to a movie, check out these names
Sean Connery
Lawerence Olivier
Antony Hopkins
Gene Hackman
Michael Caine
Robert Redford
Dirk Bogarde
James Caan
Edward Fox
Ryan O'neal
Liv Ullmann
Maximilian Schell
Hardy Kruger
Elliott Gould
Now thats a super super cast if you ask me, or anyone for that matter!
I was reading through the list, and realize no-one here mentioned Killing Fields.
That was a great war movie. Even though it wasn't a front-lines story, it still was a Vietnam movie simply because of what it was representing.
I don't think that a war movie has to have front-line fighting simply to be a war movie. It could be about how the war affected people or different aspects of the war. And sometimes those stories are even better than a front-line movie.