Classic war movies have been around for generations. Whether it's a love story between a war-torn couple, or a look into what life on the battlefield is like, war has a place in not only history, but on the big screen.
Here are the best classic war movies, according Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews.
1. "Paths of Glory" (1957)
Kirk Douglas takes center stage in this Stanley Kubrick-directed World War I drama where soldiers refuse to take commanding orders, knowing the attack is impossible. As a result, the superior officers decide to make an example of the defiant soldiers.
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David Denby of The New Yorker wrote, "The sardonic rhetoric may be laid on a little heavily at times, but the movie is blunt and scornfully brilliant."
2. "Apocalypse Now "(1979)
Frances Ford Coppola's film takes viewers into the heart of life during the Vietnam War. The story is based on the book adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
"'Apocalypse Now' did help provide me, and many of my generation, with a vision of what film art could achieve, a vision so magnificent it doomed us to spend much of our subsequent moviegoing lives in a funk," wrote Eric Harrison for the Houston Chronicle.
3. "Platoon" (1986)
Director Oliver Stone gives viewers a ground level view of the Vietnam War in this drama, which stars Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, and Willem Dafoe. The film cemented Stone's career as a director.
Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News wrote, "This film is an act of courage. Stone, the gutsy writer-director, records in a devastating barrage of images the relentless horror and the senseless carnage experienced by far too many Americans in Vietnam."
4. "Patton" (1970)
This three-hour film won seven Academy Awards for its portrayal of Gen. George Patton during wartime.
"The film lays bare the roots of Patton's lust for power in his willingness to sacrifice everything to his vaunting ego, a trait which is mirrored in George C Scott's superb performance," wrote critic Phil Hardy for Time Out.
5. "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949)
The film portrays how far war can push a soldier and the sympathies that can interfere with being a commanding officer.
"One of the first and arguably the greatest of the Hollywood films to examine the pressures of command and psychological toll of making life and death decision," wrote critic Sean Axmaker of Turner Classic Movies.
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