The Best War Movies to Stream on Netflix Right Now

Can we say something controversial? We’re going to say something controversial. War movies, by and large, really aren’t that good. The reason has something to do with the stakes. When the operative tension in the film is literal life or death, the only successful mood you can really create is suspense. Many great war movies do accomplish this mood—1917 and Dunkirk are examples of war films just treating themselves as straight suspense. But otherwise, what we get is just carnage. While we certainly need films to go there—to show us, as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now cries, “the horror”—we can only go there so often. (For the utmost example of this category, go watch Come and See.)

Usually, war films are good for atmosphere—they’re good for putting us somewhere we haven’t been and showing us exactly why we’d never want to go there. They’re good for historical recreation and empathy—sometimes only when we see the horror do we take action.

But we don’t really sit in front of dramatic big screen films to learn. We don’t want our art to be didactic or moralistic. We watch movies in order to feel stuff, man. And, like the best sports movies, the best war films are rarely about the topic itself; it’s not so much about the conflict, but the ripples of the conflict and the people affected by the conflict. That’s not to say there aren’t great war war films. (Some that come to mind: The Thin Red Line, Ran, Full Metal Jacket, and Taegukgi.) There just aren't as many.

The kind of war-adjacent films we’re thinking of are films like Schindler’s List and Grave of the Fireflies, which, we think, are ultimately some of the best of the genre.

So with all that in mind, let’s see what Netflix has for us. These are the historical, the war war, and the war adjacent. Here are the best war movies on Netflix right now.