Over the course of their history, all movie genres build up some kind of status quo. In the case of the war genre—which has undeniably produced several of the greatest films of all time—, we’re generally talking about films with a noteworthy level of psychological realism which turn military heroism into something larger than life, almost mythical.
Throughout the years, however, several of the greatest war movies ever made have been incredibly subversive. These are films which challenge the statuos quo, deconstruct the many myths of war and military conflict, focus on perspectives that the mainstream side of the genre never would, and portray combat as something utterly meaningless. For fans of the genre, they’re absolutely essential viewing.
10
‘Born on the Fourth of July’ (1989)
Few conflicts that the United States has been involved with have ever been more subject to subversive and countercultural critique than the Vietnam War. Marry that with one of the most prominent subversive filmmakers in modern Hollywood history, Oliver Stone, and you get the two-and-a-half-hour-long epic Born on the Fourth of July, a biopic about the outspoken anti-war activist Ron Kovic.
Six Vietnam War movies have been nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, and all six are generally praised among the best Hollywood films of their respective eras, Born on the Fourth of July being no exception. Much like the Kovic autobiography it’s based on, the film dismantles traditional myths of military patriotism and heroism in ways as thought-provoking as they are undeniably subversive.
9
‘M*A*S*H’ (1970)
Even though the TV show it inspired is much more famous and culturally iconic, there’s no denying just how impactful Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H was and continues to be. It’s one of the best Korean War movie masterpieces ever made, a comedy about three non-conformist Army surgeons who use comedy to protect their sanity while treating wounded soldiers during the War.
With this, Altman fundamentally re-defined the way Hollywood cinema poked fun at military conflict with dark, razor-sharp satire and irreverent absurdism. Though it’s set during the Korean War, the film was released right at the height of the Vietnam War, and is thus deeply charged with an almost unparalleled sense of anti-authoritarianism and anti-war spirit.
8
‘La Bola Negra’ (2026)
Federico García Lorca was one of the most important poets and playwrights in Spain’s modern history, and even though the exact details of his death remain a mystery, historians agree that he was most likely murdered by the Falangists during Spain’s Civil War due to his being gay. All that is left of La Bola Negra, his unfinished final play, are four pages. Filmmaking duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi were inspired by the play to make the film of the same name, a decades-spanning triptych weaving together the lives of three queer men between 1932 and 2017.
Over the course of its festival run so far, La Bola Negra has been immensely successful, and praise for it is likely to remain sky-high once it gets its wide release and Netflix premiere. By looking at such a complicated era of Spanish history and the war genre as a whole through an inherently queer lens, La Bola Negra rejects the traditional hypermasculine ideals that have ruled the genre for over a century.
7
‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978)
Based partly on an unproduced screenplay called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis A. Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker, Michael Cimino‘s The Deer Hunter is further proof that few eras have produced more subversive war movies than the Vietnam War era. In it, three friends from small-town Pennsylvania see their lives and bonds upended by the horrors and trauma of the War.
Best-known for how its narrative revolves around the pure psychological torture of forced Russian roulette, The Deer Hunter is, indeed, one of the heaviest movies of the 20th century. By giving the homefront just as much attention as—if not perhaps even more than—the battlefield, the movie subverts the tropes of traditional war epics by lasering in on the psychological effects of war.
Loosely based on the Japanese manga series of the same name by Keiji Nakazawa, Barefoot Gen is far and away one of the most horrifyingly disturbing animated movies ever made. Anyone who thinks that cartoons can’t possibly be as effective as live-action cinema at conveying the horrors of war clearly hasn’t seen Barefoot Gen, which follows a young boy and his pregnant mother fighting for survival amidst the devastating aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Infused with the hard-hitting emotional strength of the source material, which is largely autobiographical and thus painfully realistic, Barefoot Gen delivers an unsparing critique of Japanese domestic militarism and state fascism. Furthermore, its revolutionary animation pulls no punches, particularly when it comes to the infamous sequence of the actual bombing.
5
‘The Cranes Are Flying’ (1957)
For a nation where state censorship of the media was such a pressing issue throughout pretty much its entire existence, it’s admirable just how many subversive war film masterpieces came out of the Soviet Union. Case in point: Mikhail Kalatozov‘s The Cranes Are Flying, about a young woman whose life is violently torn apart when her lover volunteers to fight on the front lines during World War II.
The film intelligently subverts years’ worth of rigid conventions regarding how World War II was allowed to be depicted on the silver screen.
Released during the Khrushchev thaw, a period of relative cultural relaxation following the death of Joseph Stalin, the film intelligently subverts years’ worth of rigid conventions regarding how World War II was allowed to be depicted on the silver screen. Where war cinema used to be highly propagandistic in the Soviet Union, Cranes Are Flying brought the collective myths of the Motherland into question and depicted uncomfortable realities that its country’s cinematic catalog had never really seen before.
4
‘Paths of Glory’ (1957)
Based on Humphrey Cobb‘s 1935 novel of the same name, itself based on the Souain corporals affair that took place during World War I, Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory is about a French colonel who must defend three of his soldiers in a rigged court-martial after they are used as scapegoats. It’s one of those rare war movies without any significant flaws, a testament to Kubrick’s unmatched quality as a filmmaker.
Much like the greatest subversive war movies in history, Paths of Glory was heavily censored and even banned in multiple countries, all as a result of its sharp criticisms of French military leadership and its scathing anti-war themes. It’s a drama which targets the institutional decay, moral corruption, and class exploitation that has always poisoned the military establishment as a whole.
3
‘Come And See’ (1985)
Elem Klimov‘s Soviet masterpiece Come And See is the fourth-highest-rated motion picture of all time on Letterboxd, and it’s a perfectly well-deserved position. This is, after all, one of the heaviest movies of the last 50 years, about a naive Belarussian teenager who joins the Soviet resistance during WWII, only to watch his romantic dreams of heroism shatter in front of his eyes.
Come And See‘s messaging is abundantly clear: war is nothing more than an entirely senseless nightmare, and military heroism is absolutely nothing more than a dangerous myth. As one of the most terrifying and uncompromisingly gut-wrenching war dramas in the history of cinema, there are few better words to describe it than “masterfully subversive.”
2
‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)
Following a nightmarish production history that’s almost as well-known as the movie itself, Francis Ford Coppola released Apocalypse Now, a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad‘s legendary 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. In it, a US Army captain is tasked with traveling up a Cambodian river to assassinate a rogue Special Forces colonel during the Vietnam War.
Though it’s definitely action-packed and laced with nail-biting suspense, Apocalypse Now is no traditional war drama, but rather a quasi-surreal journey through the River Styx straight into Hell itself. It’s one of the best psychological war movies of all time, where war and militarism are treated with such unapologetic absurdism and cynicism that it’s hard not to let out a sigh of relief by the time the credits roll.
1
‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ (1964)
Image via Columbia Pictures
Who, if not Stanley Kubrick himself—still hailed by many as the greatest filmmaker in history—could possibly be behind what’s arguably the most subjective war film in history? It is, of course, Dr. Strangelove, based on the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George. This darkly comedic political satire sees a paranoid US Air Force general ordering a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, triggering a frantic race to recall the bombers and stop the Earth’s destruction.
With a perfect balance between suspenseful urgency and irresistibly funny dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove is one of the most timeless war satires in the history of cinema. It’s a radically subversive film to the core, taking the concept of humanity’s utter annihilation and turning it into a laughing matter. With a screenplay that brilliantly deconstructs and pokes fun at military nationalism, it’s a must-see for anyone who loves war movies that not only reject the status quo, but downright attack it.
