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Most war movies are understandably based on real-life conflicts from humanity’s turbulent past. And given the majority of movies – war or otherwise – tend to be around two hours long (and rarely longer than three hours), the focus can sometimes only be on one side of any conflict or dispute. This can generally result in movies that are about good versus evil, or protagonist versus antagonist, and war movies perhaps more often than not adhere to this form of storytelling.
Many great war movies only focus on one side of the conflict they’re about, and that’s okay. It’s something that can be done well, and for conflicts that get covered a lot in cinema, it’s possible to watch several war movies (say all about World War II) and see things from different sides. But some ambitious war movies tackle combat situations from two or more sides within the one movie, with the following war-related films all being examples of this approach being executed well.
10 ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’ (1983)
Beyond being a World War II movie, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is more broadly a film about a clash of cultures, all set within a prisoner of war camp. It splits its time evenly between the Japanese forces who run the camp and the (mostly) British soldiers who are being held prisoners there, with essentially equal parts Japanese and English dialogue.
It had a Japanese director, Nagisa Ōshima, and notably had its two main characters (on opposing sides) played by an English musician (David Bowie) and a Japanese musician (Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also wrote the film’s score). It’s a slow but absorbing World War II drama, and successfully shows two opposing forces in surprisingly empathetic ways.
9 ‘Waterloo’ (1970)
Of the many movies that feature Napoleon Bonaparte as a character, Waterloo is up there as one of the very best. It centers around the divisive titular battle later immortalized in an ABBA song, with screen time split between the two main sides: the French forces led by Napoleon himself (Rod Steiger), and the British allied forces overseen by the Duke of Wellington (Christopher Plummer).
It feels like a movie that wants to tell this historical story largely the way it happened, and plays out surprisingly neutral as a result. It can all feel a bit matter-of-fact at times, but when the battle scenes begin, the film starts to truly impress, as it’s rare to see historical war sequences in movies play out at the scale seen here.
8 ‘Is Paris Burning?’ (1966)
With a runtime that falls just shy of three hours, Is Paris Burning? certainly has ample time to explore its central narrative from a few different points of view. The historical story being explored here is that of the French Resistance combating German forces in the final days of World War II, when Nazi Germany’s grip on the French capital city it occupied was slipping.
On top of different characters from both the French and German sides, American Allied forces also play a role within the film, leading to the casting of some well-known stars like Anthony Perkins and Kirk Douglas. There are similar big-name actors for the French and German characters, too, including the likes of Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, and Leslie Caron.
7 ‘Joint Security Area’ (2000)
Joint Security Area is an underrated movie directed by Park Chan-wook, made just a few years before the South Korean filmmaker saw his career truly take off on an international scale with the release of Oldboy. Its story revolves around a murder investigation at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which sits between North and South Korea.
It’s a zone that was established at what was ostensibly the end of the Korean War in 1953, but tensions still exist between the North and the South, and this is reflected by many of Joint Security Area’s characters being military personnel. It’s not a war film in the traditional sense, perhaps, but it focuses on two different armies and the inherent tensions between the two, with characters on both sides of the conflict.
6 ‘Hell in the Pacific’ (1968)
Few World War II movies feel like Hell in the Pacific, which is arguably more of a survival film than a war movie. It also feels about as small-scale as a movie about such a huge war could be, given there are only two characters in the film: a member of the Japanese forces (Toshiro Mifune) and an American pilot (Lee Marvin).
It’s instantly tense, because both end up stranded on the same small island, and find themselves at odds and unable to communicate. Hell in the Pacific eventually becomes about them needing to work together if either is to have any chance of surviving into the future. Not only is it as simple and small as war can get, but it’s also perhaps as even-handed and balanced between two sides as a war movie could ever be.
5 ‘The Longest Day’ (1962)
The Longest Day is up there as one of the most large-scale war movies of all time, arguably exceeding the likes of similarly ambitious epics like Is Paris Burning? and A Bridge Too Far. It’s also one of the best of these big World War II movies, being a thoroughly engrossing depiction of the D-Day landings at Normandy.
It uses its 178-minute runtime to have several different sets of armed forces focused on, including American, British, German, and French soldiers. This mammoth film also needed three directors – Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki – and had a gigantic cast that included the likes of John Wayne, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, and Robert Mitchum, to name just a few.
4 ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006)
While Pan’s Labyrinth is primarily a fantasy movie (and a pretty grisly one at that), it’s also a war movie. Despite it taking place in 1944, the war focused on isn’t World War II, with it instead following a story that plays out several years after the Spanish Civil War, with forces of the Francoist dictatorship clashing with various rebels.
A general of the former (played by Sergi López) serves as the main antagonist, with his brutality and ruthlessness causing his stepdaughter, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) to escape into a disturbing fantasy world. Given the opposing rebel forces are also given significant screen time, the war-focused parts of Pan’s Labyrinth do ultimately show two sides to a conflict.
3 ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ (1970)
Like The Longest Day, Tora! Tora! Tora! was a World War II movie that had several directors – Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda, and Kinji Fukasaku – helm different scenes. This was done to present the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor from the two main sides involved: the U.S. forces and the Japanese army.
It’s largely successful in showing Pearl Harbor from the perspective of those who attacked the naval base and those who were caught off guard by it, with the event being the trigger for the U.S. joining World War II. Tora! Tora! Tora! has an impressive scale and ambitious scope that makes it still hold up as a gripping World War II epic, even 50+ years on from its release.
2 ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ (2017)
Not all war movies are necessarily about real-life conflicts, as the futuristic War for the Planet of the Apes demonstrates. As the third movie in the 2010s Planet of the Apes trilogy, it takes things to another level when it comes to scale and ambition, ultimately depicting the final conflict that saw apes definitively take over the Earth, paving the way for the stories depicted in the original Planet of the Apes series.
It has the most focus on Caesar and his ape forces of all three films in the trilogy, but still spends time on human characters, predominantly a paramilitary faction led by Woody Harrelson’s character. The ape vs. humans war may be fictional, but it nevertheless details the points of view of figures on both sides.
1 ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ & ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ (2006)
Few directorial achievements by Clint Eastwood are quite as impressive as his 2006 duology which is made up of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. These two movies complement each other perfectly, with the former telling the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the American perspective, and the latter telling it from the Japanese perspective.
Taken together, it’s a 4.5-hour epic that would have to be among the best World War II films of the 21st century so far. They were made and released close enough together to feel like one big film, with adequate time therefore afforded to both sides in this infamously brutal battle from the Second World War.
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