The 1990s was a golden generation for the blockbuster war flick. Spielberg brought us the terror-filled Saving Private Ryan and the poignant Schindler’s List, Mel Gibson starred in the English-hating Braveheart, while Roberto Benigni and Terrence Malick delivered Life is Beautiful and The Thin Red Line respectively. While the tide seemed to settle for the genre somewhat in the 2000s, it was arguably the era of the underrated military action movie, and with that came some truly undervalued features that have never really received the credit they deserve. Here are the most underrated war films of the 2000s…

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6 Lebanon

     Metrodome Distribution

The 1982 Lebanon War between the Lebanese and the Israelis claimed the lives of around 3,000 people and was the subject of Samuel Maoz’s 2009 war picture, Lebanon. The film follows a group of Israeli tank-operating soldiers who are confined to their armored vehicle in grueling heat. Under increasingly testing circumstances, their frustrations begin to surface. Lebanon won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, the highest award any Israeli film had received up to that point, though the Israeli government itself protested the film.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

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MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

5 Letters from Iwo Jima

     Warner Bros. Pictures

Director Clint Eastwood’s love affair with depicting the valiant underdog continued with Letters from Iwo Jima, his counter-argument sequel to Flags of Our Fathers, which offered the American perspective of the bloody battle that took place on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, during February and March 1945. Letters from Iwo Jima depicts this World War II battle from the Axis perspective of Japan.

The film is a moving illustration of war from the eyes of men who valued their honor, valor, and patriotism above all else, yet were cruelly led like lambs to the slaughter by the Japanese high command. With casualties surpassing 30,000, the battle became one of the most gruesome of WWII.

4 Atonement

     Relativity Media

James McAvoy stars alongside Keira Knightley in Joe Wright’s Atonement, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name. Initially set pre-WWII in 1935, the British romantic drama concerns the love story of Cecilia Tallis (Knightley) and Robbie Turner (MacAvoy), and the misinterpretation of Cecilia’s meddling younger sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan), which subsequently leads to Robbie being arrested and falsely convicted of rape.

The film fast-forwards several years to Robbie’s eventual release, and time serving as a soldier in WWII. Atonement is beautifully captured through the lens of cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, and it is certainly a romantic war movie for the ages.

3 Defiance

     Paramount Pictures

Mentos and Coke, alcohol and antibiotics, gas and a naked flame — all combinations that seem to mix better than Daniel Craig and accents. In Edward Zwick’s 2008 film Defiance, Craig plays Tuvia Bielski a Jewish Belorussian militant. Based on a remarkable true story, the film follows the Bielski brothers who form a militia in order to fend off the Nazi bombardment of Eastern Europe. Seeking refuge in a forest, the Jewish partisans begin to shelter a growing number of those fleeing persecution.

As the brothers and their recruits seek to keep themselves and the increasingly populated camp safe from Nazi insurgents, they also have to contend with internal conflict between their own and the freezing elements of the winter. While Craig’s Eastern European accent certainly does contain remnants of harsh Slavic dialect, it still really leaves something to be desired. Aside from that, Defiance is a movie that articulately encapsulates the desolation the Nazi invasion of Europe caused, and the immense suffering inflicted on those that were simply trying to stay alive.

2 Rescue Dawn

     MGM Distribution Co.

Director Werner Herzog has always been renowned for delivering critically acclaimed films to the art-house circuit, and like many of his works, 2006’s Rescue Dawn is another that seemed to pass people by. Based on his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, the film dramatizes the true story of Dieter Dengler, a pilot during the Vietnam War.

With Christian Bale in the titular role as Dengler who is shot down by Laotian villagers and taken into captivity, he attempts to lead his fellow prisoners of war to safety, but his plans are quickly derailed. In typical Bale fashion, he brings a real big-screen presence to the (slightly) smaller screen of the art house, his rendition of Dengler is flawless and emphatic in equal measure.

1 A Very Long Engagement

     Warner Bros. France

Un Long Dimanche De Fiancailles (A Very Long Engagement) directed by Amelie’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is a 2004 French-language romantic drama. Audrey Tautou stars in the titular role once again, this time as Mathilde, a 20-something young woman with a limp, who undertakes a personal mission to locate her missing fiancé deployed at the Battle of the Somme during World War I. For admirers of Amelie, A Very Long Engagement incorporates the same, unmistakable style, with its yellow-tinted incandescence, and whimsically-powered story with “blink, and you’ll miss it” quick-cuts, zappy editing, and a clear celebration of the fanciful.

This is by no means a conventional war flick; the ever-pressing threat of death is an absent feature, partly due to the way in which Mathilde, with her doe-eyed expression, seems to float through life almost unperturbed by the issues at hand. It’s a refreshingly poetic, fairytale-like take on something usually so mortifyingly bestial.