4 Forgotten War Movies So Intense You’ll Forget You’re Watching a Movie

With all the violence, the war genre doesn’t have much trouble feeling intense: just put soldiers under fire, throw in some tanks, explosions, dust, and you already have a sequence that naturally grabs your attention. However, some movies tend to be more glamorized, or sometimes even try to distance themselves from that image, but very few are actually able to make you feel like you’re in the middle of the chaos. It’s not like you’ll literally bite your nails and feel desperate while watching a movie like this, but following these moments can still have an unsettling and tense effect.

Think of a war movie where the characters get confused, make mistakes, lose their comrades, and have to make decisions as quickly as possible in a completely out-of-control situation with no time to catch their breath. We’ve picked a few examples that are exactly like that and, among so many features in the genre, almost nobody remembers them anymore — but they’re absolutely good at delivering what they set out to do.

4) All Quiet on the Western Front

When it comes to war features, we already know we’re going to be faced with a lot of brutality, but we rarely stop to think about something that is definitely on soldiers’ minds and doesn’t usually get much focus. All Quiet on the Western Front shows that what’s truly terrifying isn’t necessarily seeing someone die, but realizing that you have no idea when it’s going to happen to you. The story follows Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), a young German who enlists in World War I with that idealized idea that he’s doing something great for his country, only to reach the trenches and discover that there’s nothing glorious about war. From there, there’s plenty of mud, hunger, bombardments, and combat that can break out within seconds.

And the battles in the movie aren’t designed to make you know exactly what’s going on. Things can seem to be going one way, and moments later, it can turn into Paul running for his life while everything explodes around him. And it’s unpredictable, because even the most violent moments aren’t “announced” beforehand, making it really hard for you to feel neutral while watching. Then, when the protagonist finally reacts to the war like someone who has been completely worn down by it, the transformation is fantastic since All Quiet on the Western Front has made you go through the same hell right alongside him.

3) The Outpost

Do you know how intense The Outpost is? You spend a good part of the movie knowing the soldiers are in a terrible position and waiting for the moment when everything goes wrong. The story takes place in Afghanistan and follows the American troops stationed at Combat Outpost Keating, a base located in such a vulnerable position that the soldiers can practically see the problem coming before it happens. So, when hundreds of Taliban fighters launch an attack on the outpost, the situation stops being a military operation and turns into a fight to simply stay alive. And, much like All Quiet on the Western Front, nobody has any idea of the scale of the attack (how many there are, where they’re coming from, etc.).

You see the characters shouting over the radio, looking for ammunition, trying to locate their comrades, and dealing with wounded men while the gunfire keeps coming. So, forget everything overly cinematic, because The Outpost feels like a group of people trying to solve an impossible problem while that problem keeps getting bigger. Also, the action doesn’t really have a turning point, because even when the soldiers manage to gain a small advantage, there’s always another attack or an emergency right after. It’s urgent at all times, and just like the characters, you end up feeling exhausted.

2) Black Hawk Down

Directed by Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down is a film that makes you understand how bad the situation is before the characters manage to do the same. In it, we see an American operation in Somalia, which was supposed to be a relatively quick mission to capture members of Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s organization. However, two Back Hawk helicopters are shot down, soldiers become trapped in the middle of the city, and everything turns into a battle that lasts roughly 15 hours. The most impressive part? The fact that the movie makes you feel the mission getting worse without having to stop the story to explain it.

We see a helicopter go down, then a rescue attempt begins, but the rescue team runs into resistance, so another group has to be sent in, but vehicles are hit, and soldiers get isolated; and when you think there’s finally a way out, something goes wrong again. The idea behind Black Hawk Down seems to be making you feel just as disoriented as the characters, especially because the filmmaking adds to that with the camera constantly in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by dust, gunfire, debris, and people running in different directions. After a certain point, you stop caring about who’s going to win and start wondering how much longer the soldiers can keep going.

1) Warfare

Of all the movies on this list, this is probably the one you’ve heard about at some point thanks to the cast. Even so, it’s still very overlooked and seems to have only gotten attention for a short while. Warfare aims to recreate a real 2006 operation in Ramadi, Iraq, following a group of soldiers who occupy a house to monitor the area until an attack turns the whole mission into an emergency situation. And here, everything is very straightforward, without introductions or long explanations; the film puts you inside that house with the characters and stays there when everything starts going wrong. So the focus is figuring out what happened and what to do next: who’s wounded, who can still fight, how to call for help, and how to get everyone out without putting even more people in danger.

However, the intensity of Warfare goes even further, as it doesn’t hold back in the way everything is portrayed. Co-directed by Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who took part in the events, nothing is softened, allowing the situation to feel as realistic as possible: the communications are confusing, the injuries always change what’s happening, they don’t know how long it will take for help to arrive, and every attempt to solve one problem seems to create another. It’s a movie that builds the entire experience around this lack of information, and that’s why it’s uncomfortable from beginning to end (but in a way that keeps you hooked as you want to know how it’s all going to end).