Fighting is hell — but war movies can be really darn funny. Some of the military movies below will make you think, some will make you cry, and some will just plop you right in the middle of the action. But they have one thing in common: All of them are available for streaming platforms like Prime, Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, etc. So strap in and get bingeing, soldier.
Fury is an American action movie featuring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, and Scott Eastwood produced and directed by David Ayer in 2014.
The film portrays U.S. tank crews battling in Nazi Germany during the last weeks of World War II Western Theatre. Ayer was inspired by supporting soldiers with his family and reading novels, such as Belton Y. Cooper ‘s Death Traps, regarding American armored vehicles with World War II and the heavy death levels that tank crews in Europe experienced. Below are some of the recommendations for people looking for movies like Fury.
Here is the List of Movies like Fury:
Hacksaw Ridge :
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
Directed by Mel Gibson, Hacksaw Ridge is a very special war movie, different than most I’ve seen. It’s a biographical drama about Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a conscientious objector who went to war as a military medic and was given the Honor Medal for the lives he saved. What separates it is that Hacksaw Ridge dives straight into horrifyingly detailed battle representations while at the same time showing us the finest humanity can give.
Doss was a Christian Seventh-day Adventist who declined to touch a sword. We see him ridiculed, battered, and placed into solitary confinement for his adherence to his pacifist principalities, despite volunteering to serve as a military medic.
Doss answers all this with humility and kindness. When his motives are questioned, he says “It doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit of it back together with the world so set to tearing itself apart.” The first half of the film is so sweet, funny, and romantic, you’ll forget it’s a movie about war.
Then Doss gets to the blasted Hell-scape on Okinawa nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge and the bullets begin to rip people in half. Saving Private Ryan is the only war film I’ve ever seen that is on par with the gore and savagery of Hacksaw Ridge. And as the world breaks apart, Doss does his utmost to reassemble the little bits.
Unbroken:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
Unbroken is one of the many true stories on our list, telling the story of Louis “Louie” Zamperini (Jack O’Connell). Louie Zamperini had been an Olympic athlete before being part of a WWII bomber crew. His aircraft went down in the Pacific Ocean during a search and rescue operation, where he and another crew member survived in a life raft for 47 days.
After this, Japanese soldiers captured them and held them as prisoners of war until Japan surrendered. It’s a story of strength, resolve, grace, and salvation. The characters are really convincing and they behave well. There’s also this one scene with a shark that made the film for me so I’m not going to ruin it.
Mrs. Miniver:
Available on Amazon Prime
Maybe the most important film on this list, Mrs. Miniver has received six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Released in 1942, this drama depicts a British family’s struggle to cope with the effects of war on the home front. It was adopted by the Library of Congress into the National Film Register in 2009 and will be preserved for all time.
Many, including Winston Churchill, credit this film as a major factor in getting America involved in the war. Indeed, for this reason, the director of the film, William Wyler, admitted to making the film. He joined the Army after finishing the film, and later said the film depicted war in too soft a light.
A Nazi propaganda minister said it “shows a family’s destiny during the current war, and has only been dreamed of its refined, powerful propagandistic tendency up to now. There is not a single angry word uttered against Germany, but the anti-German trend is completely satisfied. I often find classic films boring, drawn-out, or plot-short. When you are like me, don’t think.
This isn’t that kind of film. If you’re a fan with some sort of film or literature, or if the blog has had your interest up to this level, you ought to see Mrs. Miniver! The film is also appropriate for the entire family unlike other entries on our list.
Schindler’s List:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
One of the darker films on our list (which says something about the genre), Schindler’s List dramatizes the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German industrialist who has saved a large number of Jews from certain deaths in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Schindler hired Jews to work as a source of cheap labor in his factories and maintained a careful and cordial working relationship to keep his workers safe.
The Schindler ‘s List was shot in black and white, directed by Steven Spielberg to give it a timeless, documentary-style feel. This is a story on good and bad, our positions in bringing in good and evil, and the reasons behind our actions. It has won seven Academy Awards, including best picture.
Saving Private Ryan:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
Without the star-studded masterpiece, no WWII film collection will be complete. I credit Private Ryan to wake me up to how terrible war really is. So few videos (if any) are as emotional as this film. The brutality is real and informative in a manner that is not romantic or stylized. I am not going to give here a plot synopsis.
If you don’t know what this is all about, go and see. It is one of the best performances by Tom Hanks and it is a paragon of the genre. Instead, I would like to talk about how important it is to history and how this links with our upcoming documentary.Although the phrase “war is hell” is common, it is a sobering experience to see the unflinching realism of Steven Spielberg’s take on the D-Day invasion.
Most Americans are grievously unaware of what happened in Normandy on June 6, 1944, and if not for Saving Private Ryan, I assume that we ordinary people will have no knowledge of D-Day at all. But this day is something like the Fourth of July, for the people of France. D-Day was the start of their liberation from the Nazi occupation and saved the culture and way of life in France.
Defiance:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
Even though most war movies are inspired by historical events — positioning themselves at a certain point in time or focusing on a particular battle — the smaller stories based on real individuals can feel even more dramatic. Frequent war film director Edward Zwick ‘s Defiance brings to life the Bielski brothers, a group of Belarusian Jews who lead thousands of Jewish refugees to safety from Nazi repression through German-occupied Naliboki forest.
Like other tales of survival during the Second World War, the film is exceptionally grim in its gritty portrayal of surviving off the ground in a war zone, though its unwavering resolve can leave you breathless.
Beasts of No Nation:
Available on Netflix
The WWII drama of True Detective Season 1 director Cary Fukunaga isn’t a show that you put on in the background. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala, this study of visceral character traces a preadolescent Agu (Abraham Attah) after being recruited as a child soldier in an African civil war (its specifics are left intentionally ambiguous).
Lorded over by a gruff commander (Idris Elba), the film is loud, tender, and violent — a story of the coming-of-age in which the characters may not be living to grow old.
Band of Brothers:
Available on Amazon Prime
Band of Brothers is not a movie but an HBO miniseries produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg after they made Saving Private Ryan, unlike the other entries in here. Although Saving Private Ryan is fictional, Band of Brothers is made up of real events and characters.
Each episode begins with excerpts of interviews with the actual veterans portrayed in the series. These veterans also foreshadowed the exact episodes.The historical context was so important to the show that Tom Hanks had this to say while asked about the freedoms taken: “We’ve made history work on our screens.
We had to condense a vast number of characters, fold up the experiences of other people into 10 or 15 people, have people say and do things that others have said or done. We had people removing their helmets to identify them when they never would have done so in combat. But I still think that it’s three to four times more effective than most other films.
Hostiles:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
This Western will be the favorite movie of your dad, even though he always has to watch it. The year is 1892, and a captain of the Army (Christian Bale) is tasked to return to his men a former adversary of Native America (Wes Studi).
The movie has a bit of The Searchers blood pumping through its brooding veins from Black Mass director Scott Cooper; during his mission, the captain encounters a woman (Gone Girl’s Rosamund Pike) who lost her entire family to a vicious Indian attack, illuminating the existing friction between the White man and the Native American. Hostiles are no Dances With Wolves, Bleak and Germane.
Outlaw King:
Available on Netflix
In this gritty period film, Chris Pine plays Robert the Bruce, a legendary Scottish rebel. Robert – who starred as a hero in another gritty period piece about a Scottish rebel, Braveheart – does what most rebels do and defies the King of England, sparking a war for Scottish Freedom’s ultimate destiny.
When it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, the film sparked a bit of buzz, mostly because it features Pine’s full-frontal nudity (don’t get too excited, it’s brief), but also because it was found so boring by critics that Netflix decided to cut off the film 20 minutes before release.
The result is less meandering, and it’s by no means an action-packed saga, but if you’re in medieval history and a gritty Pine, you can also charge to the Scottish highlands when there’s nothing else to watch.
Related: Movies Like Outlaw King
Inglourious Bastards:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
The first of revisionist history flicks by Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds is a rolling revenge picture that envisages a group of Jewish renegades plotting to take down the Nazi leadership in occupied Paris in 1944.
Although the film is not as coherent as other Tarantino films, it may be his most entertaining, with high-tension verbal sparring and scalp-smashing mayhem sequences, all erupting as Tarantino’s band of vigilantes (led by Brad Pitt ‘s drawing lieutenant, Aldo Raine) shoot down their German rivals in a glorious blaze.
The Pianist:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
For his portrayal of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish pianist fighting for survival in Warsaw at the dawn of World War II, in The Pianist, Adrien Brody became the youngest person ever to take home the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003.
The autobiographical film directed by Roman Polanski (who also took home the Best Director award) documents Szpilman ‘s true-life story that grew up in a privileged family and refused to believe that the Nazi occupation would grow large enough to affect him and his loved ones until the threat proves too real.
Brody nails this challenging role with a precision that sees an inevitable travesty unfolding before his eyes, and the granular, though extensive, effects it has had on one individual.
War Horse:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
An emotional tale about a boy and his horse, you guessed it. This Spielberg-directed drama is adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s popular play and novel of the same name, chronicling a young man’s journey and the experiences of his thoroughbred in war once his lifelong companion was sold off to the British army at the outbreak of the First World War.
The period piece garnered six worthy nominations for Oscars, including Best Picture, as the Saving Private Ryan filmmaker highlights his experience of telling war stories, culminating in the purest sense in an epic.
Shadow:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
In Darkness, the visually impressive spectacular action of Hero and House of Flying Daggers wuxia master Zhang Yimou, parasols are more than handy sun-blockers: they can be transformed into lethal weapons, firing boomerang-like steel blades at oncoming invaders, and turning them into defensive sleds to ride across the muddy roads.
These devices are one of many imaginative leaps made in telling this Shakespearean saga of the intrigue, vengeance, and secret doppelgangers set in the Three Kingdoms Period of China. This is an epic of martial arts where intricate scripting is as complicated as the sometimes ballet battle scenes. If you have been bored by the wars in Game of Thrones, Shadow will have an exciting substitute.
War Machine:
Available on Netflix | Amazon Prime
Not every war movie has to be a story of despair. War Machine, for one, is a satirical look at militarily and politically power-hungry personalities. In the original Netflix, Brad Pitt stars as overly proud General Glen McMahon tasked with “cleaning up” the situation in Afghanistan — despite working with a team of unselfish, exhausted soldiers and politicians who just want to get the hell out of it.
As unfunny as the endless war in Afghanistan is, coming from The Big Short’s producers, War Machine is doing a snarky job of illustrating the ridiculousness of the eight-year war.
The Siege of Jadotville:
Available on Netflix
Do not look to this original Netflix movie for a compelling examination of the 1961 efforts of the Irish military to hold firm against an incursion from the recently seceded Katanga state. The fighting in the Congolese War is well known in historical records.
Look for the explosive combat taken from the traditional man-on-a-mission canvas at Jadotville’s Siege. Jamie Dornan is a regular Gary Cooper as the leader of this unprepared crew, and his work in the heat of battle makes this movie part throwback, part direct-to-DVD-style spectacle.
Conclusion:
Movies on War are like a dozen a dime. The main reason is the number of people involved in making these movies is very high. Nevertheless, there have been some classics throughout the history of these movies. Not only these movies are gripping, but the facts presented are correct as well. We hope our recommendation of movies like Fury is on point and help you learn a tiny part of history.