The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) 2000s War Movies

As with any decade, the 2000s provided filmgoing audiences with a bunch of new war movies to check out at multiplexes. Throughout the decade, six Best Picture nominees (and one winner) were war movies. As always, there were plenty of filmmakers making movies about the World Wars and the Vietnam War and the American Civil War and countless other historical conflicts.

But the decade also brought the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which opened up filmmakers to a whole new kind of war movie, with a lot of complex moral ground to cover. So, here are the five best and five worst war movies from the 2000s.

10 Best: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarantino had been talking about making a World War II epic since the ‘90s, and when he finally released the movie in 2009, it didn’t disappoint. Alternate history narratives don’t always work out, but Inglourious Basterds’ bold mixture of fact and fiction through a chapter-based nonlinear narrative works beautifully.

Christoph Waltz brought to life one of the greatest villains in movie history with his chilling Oscar-winning portrayal of S.S. Col. Hans Landa, while sharp turns by Brad Pitt and Mélanie Laurent round out the ensemble.

9 Worst: The Alamo (2004)

At the very least, the 2004 movie about the Battle of the Alamo makes more of an effort to sympathize with the Mexican side of the conflict than John Wayne’s Texas-centric 1960 movie. Unfortunately, it’s also a frightfully dull movie.

Taking a loss of more than $146 million, The Alamo is one of the biggest box office bombs in film history. It’s hard not to feel bad for the few people who did buy tickets.

8 Best: Black Hawk Down (2001)

Ridley Scott’s cinematic portrayal of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu is regarded as one of the most significant movies of the Bush-era, but outside of its post-9/11 context, it’s simply a visceral, uncompromising portrait of wartime brutality.

Although it takes a few artistic liberties with the actual details of the true events, Black Hawk Down is a visceral thrill-ride that captures the courage of soldiers without glamorizing the horrors of war.

7 Worst: Gods And Generals (2003)

Roger Ebert’s review for Gods and Generals joked that segregation-praising politician Trent Lott might enjoy it. It’s a Civil War movie about the supposed virtues of the Confederacy, supporting the controversial Lost Cause ideology that the pro-slavery side of the war was the right side.

It’s a tedious three-and-a-half-hour slog tantamount to a World War II movie about how awesome the Nazis were. No wonder it tanked at the box office.

6 Best: The Hurt Locker (2008)

Kathryn Bigelow beat her ex-husband James Cameron to the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director with this masterfully crafted, emotionally charged cinematic portrait of bomb disposal units in the Iraq War.

Screenwriter Mark Boal drew from his hands-on experience as an embedded journalist when he wrote the script for The Hurt Locker, making him one of the only war movie writers to have been in the warzone they depicted.

5 Worst: Windtalkers (2002)

Often ranked among the most inaccurate war movies ever made, Windtalkers has an interesting premise that it squanders with groan-inducing clichés. It’s about Navajo Marines fighting in World War II, using their own language as an uncrackable code, but it has a predominantly white cast, so it fails to capture the Native American experiences of the war (and doesn’t really try).

John Woo is one of the greatest action directors of all time, having helmed Hard Boiled, The Killer, and A Better Tomorrow, but he didn’t put any of those skills to use when he helmed Windtalkers.

4 Best: Downfall (2004)

It can be tough for an actor to humanize a notoriously evil historical figure, and Bruno Ganz arguably faced the toughest such challenge of all by playing Adolf Hitler in the final days of his life in Downfall. The very idea of humanizing Hitler made this movie controversial, but Ganz pulled it off.

The movie doesn’t admire Hitler; it simply examines him. Somebody as evil as Hitler has to alter their own perception of reality to live with themselves, and Ganz plays that masterfully.

3 Worst: Redacted (2007)

Brian De Palma is responsible for directing some of the finest movies ever made, like Carrie, Scarface, and Blow Out. But Redacted, his fictionalized retelling of the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings, falls far short of those classics.

The director clearly had the best of intentions and feels very passionately about the subject matter, but the mock-doc style and embellishment of already-shocking facts make it a disappointing display.

2 Best: Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

Clint Eastwood has proven himself to be a mature filmmaker countless times, from the sobering Unforgiven to the heart-wrenching Million Dollar Baby. In 2006, he reached new heights as an artist when he shot two movies back-to-back about the Battle of Iwo Jima, one from the American perspective and the other from the Japanese perspective.

They’re both fine films, but the latter, Letters from Iwo Jima, is arguably the finest. Anchored by a riveting performance by Ken Watanabe and told through gorgeous cinematography, Letters from Iwo Jima deserves the classification of a masterpiece more than its U.S.-focused companion.

1 Worst: Pearl Harbor (2001)

Michael Bay can be trusted with big-budget blockbusters about robots that can turn into cars, but he’s not the right filmmaker to bring one of the worst tragedies in American history to life. For most of Pearl Harbor’s arduous three-hour runtime, we’re forced to sit through a generic love triangle featuring Ben Affleck with a dreadful Southern drawl.

That’s painful, but it’s nothing compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor being dramatized as an explosive Hollywood action thriller.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3473 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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