Hundreds of movies are released each year for audiences to enjoy worldwide. A small percentage of those movies are usually in the war movie category. Critics and fans continuously argue which films are best directed and which actor's performance is the most superlative. Still, most of them do not have a military background to judge the levels of authenticity in the movies correctly.
No one has better credentials to judge war movies than Luis Jorge Rios, a US Army combat veteran, journalist, and entrepreneur. Luis was deployed for service in Iraq and Afghanistan and, based on his experiences there, believes that these movies are the most inspirational war movies of all time.
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
A 7-time Oscar winner, this movie takes the audience to a Japanese prison camp in Burma during World War II. The film follows British POWs forced to construct a railway bridge across the River Kwai for their Japanese captors. Prisoner Lt. Colonel Nicholson and his men sabotage and delay the bridge's progress, but he later orders his men to continue the work unhindered to its completion.
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Hacksaw Ridge follows Desmond Doss, an American combat medic in World War II who refuses to carry or use any firearm due to his Seventh-day Adventist beliefs. Some of the other soldiers considered him weak and a coward for his stance until he became a hero during the Battle of Okinawa on Hacksaw Ridge, where he rescued 75 soldiers.
American Sniper (2014)
This biographical film is loosely based on the life of Chris Kyle, who was the deadliest sniper in US military history. Kyle had 255 kills (the US Department of Defense officially confirmed 160) from four tours in the Iraqi war. It explores his life after the war when he comes back home, showing the toll that the war had on his mental health and death at the hands of a troubled war veteran he was trying to help.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Considered among the best war movies of all time, Saving Private Ryan is set during the Invasion of Normandy during World War II. The Steven Spielberg film depicts a rescue mission mounted to rescue a paratrooper from behind enemy lines – Private James Ryan – whose three other brothers had already been killed in combat. Just before he dies, Captain Miller, the leader of the mission, tells Ryan to earn the chance at life given to him by not letting all the men's sacrifices to retrieve him go to waste.
Come and See (1985)
The film depicts the Nazi German occupation of Belarus, as witnessed by Flyora, a young Belarusian teenager who joins the Belarusian resistance movement. It shows the atrocities, abject terror, and human suffering that the Nazis inflicted in Eastern Europe and captured the worst aspects of war by showing how Flyora loses his innocence through it.