Pretty Good World War II Movies

They Were Expendable came out in December 1945, only a few months after the surrender of Japan. Starring John Wayne, Donna Reed, and Robert Montgomery, the film explores a lesser-known chapter in the Pacific War, the Battle of the Philippines. Directed by John Ford (The Searchers, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath), They Were Expendable tells the story of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three and its valorous conduct in an extremely brutal series of engagements.

Nothing about this sweeping wartime drama is exceptional, but when held against the best WWII movies, or the best films involving any of the major talent involved, They Were Expendable doesn't rank high.

The Battle of Midway is one of the defining moments in the Pacific theater, a defeat from which the Japanese navy never fully recovered. Historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." There's plenty of potent material there. 

You'd think a movie recounting the events of Midway, with an all-star cast including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, and Toshiro Mifune, would be absolutely riveting. The filmmakers opted to take a rare and admirable path, focusing on historical accuracy rather than cloying drama. Because of this, Midway plays more like documentary than dramatization. WWII buffs will find plenty to like, but those looking for a war epic picture might want to look elsewhere.

Tora! Tora! Tora! is regarded by some as a classic, but it's ultimately not much better than pretty good. It could've been at least half masterpiece — Akira Kurosawa was hired to make the Japanese portion of the film, but was removed from the production after about a week of filming, due to a number of reasons.

Rather than a compassionate, complex look at the intricacies of the war's cultural and historical context, Tora! Tora! Tora! is a serviceable, overlong battle picture. It receieved some pretty bold reviews when it came out, which are worth a peek.

Roger Ebert: "Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the deadest, dullest blockbusters ever made. The very word 'blockbuster' may be too lusty to describe it; maybe 'blocktickler' is more like it for this timid epic."

Vincent Canby of The New York Times: "As history, it seems a fairly accurate account of what happened, although it never much bothers its head about why. As film art, it is nothing less than a $25-million irrelevancy."

Part of Clint Eastwood's two-film experiment, Flags of our Fathers takes the American perspective of the Battle of Iwo Jima. The Japanese-centric half of the diptych, Letters From Iwo Jima, is a far better movie. Flags of Our Fathers, but is a fairly conventional war picture full of sentimentality and not much else. Its lack of subtlety sometimes feels like pro-American propaganda, but it's still a well-made picture.

A daring men-on-a-mission movie about an Allied squad led by Clint Eastwood breaking into an impenetrable Third Reich fortress to rescue a captured general, Where Eagles Dare is B-picture adventure fare through-and-through. If you think that sounds fun, you're absolutely right. However, the plot takes a rather strange left turn involving a mole hunt that throws one-too-many monkey wrenches into the story. It's a good film, but a more streamlined narrative would have made it much better.

You don't get to see the Russian perspective of WWII very often, so for that alone, Enemy at the Gates is worth a look. It tells the true story of the Battle of Stalingrad, as seen through the eyes of a character based on famous sniper Vasily Zaytsev (here called Vassili and played by a very un-Russian fellow called Jude Law).

Enemy at the Gates has fantastic leads in Jude Law, Rachael Weisz, and Ed Harris, but fictionalizes events a little too much. The director also made the decision to have every actor speak in her or his natural accent, which is fantastically disorienting, because it means you've got Russians who sound English and Germans who sound American. What could have been a fantastic, intimate WWII movie is relatively run-of-the-mill, but still a satisfying experience.