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Lebanon
Great 83 Points 2010

The heart of a battle-tank turns into a heart of darkness for four soldiers – softies – thrust into the horror of war. The obvious comparison to Das Boot captures Lebanon’s ironclad claustrophobia and blinkered view. Yet, Apocalypse Now seems more fitting an antecedent given how these unw…

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WikChip Image Caught in the crosshairs: Major Hardb...
Patton
Great 83 Points 1970

Essential though Patton may be – as war movie, as American history, as biopic – it’s not the epochal statement the Academy thought they were canonizing with seven Oscars in 1971, including Best Picture. Back then Frances Ford Coppola’s script seemed subversive, undermining American militarism …

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WikChip Image If I had my way, I'd meet Rommel F2F.
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Olympus Has Fallen
Good 83 Points 2013

Spectacular calamity followed by impressive vengeance makes Olympus Has Fallen an amply satisfying cinematic experience. So what if it’s jingoism. It’s extremely well executed jingoism, by jingo! Patriotic action-movie fans – like me – happen to like this sort of button-pushing entertainment…

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WikChip Image Stunts and FX make the movie.
Ip Man
Great 83 Points 2008

This great martial arts movie follows the beats and tropes of fictional king fu movies while burnishing the legend of Ip Man, a real life Grandmaster of Wing Chun kung fu and Bruce Lee’s teacher. The scene of an unarmed Master Ip facing down an armed Police Captain is a classic of the form.

*I…

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WikChip Image Ip Man amid the Japanese occupation
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Fury
Really Great 83 Points 2014

The pantheon of essential WWII movies has a new entrant. David Ayer’s Fury stars Brad Pitt as an American Staff Sergeant who must lead a platoon of Sherman tanks against the Germans’ superior Panzers. Think Chevies vs. Benzes, with Brad and his battle-hardened crew in an outgunned Sherman named…

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WikChip Image Bad Brad etches another Rushmorian pe...
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Free State of J...
Really Great 83 Points 2016

Newton Knight is a newly essential Matthew McConaughey role that finally knights Newt Knight as a true American hero. Even more, Free State of Jones is an only-in-America story, so corny it could only be true. A deeply moral white man frees enslaved blacks and marries a black woman during the C…

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WikChip Video CBS Sunday Morning feature on Newt Kn...
Jack Reacher: N...
Very Good 83 Points 2016

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back improves on the 2012 origin movie by locating its story within the military world from which Reacher sprang and by limiting the ultra violence.1 That said, Tom Cruise and his supporting cast are somewhat less impressive this time out, nor is the dialog as snap-crac…

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WikChip Image Ageless Action Star
Hacksaw Ridge
Great 83 Points 2016

Okinawa was once a byword for the savagery of war. Hacksaw Ridge plumbs the depths of that savagery and the grace that also attended it in the form of Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss. A conscientious objector, Doss was unsurpassed in bravery, personally rescuing 75 wounded men from the "t…

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WikChip Video Vince Vaughn talks war movie
12 Strong
Great 83 Points 2018

12 Strong is no run-of-the-mill war movie, to be valued on its moral complexity and clever comebacks. No, 12 Strong is morally simple and often wooden, making it rather unfashionable in our morally confused era. Of course, we also live in the Islamist Era, sharing God’s Earth with a medieval …

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WikChip Video Cool details about the real Horse Sol...
Hostiles
Great 83 Points 2017

The American Indian Wars were mostly over by 1892. Bad blood ran deep, with bands of crazed killers roaming the land, as other combatants tried to move on with life after wartime. Writer-director Scott Cooper adroitly uses this brutal and beautiful milieu for a piercing story about a cavalry capt…

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