10 Greatest War Movies of the '70s, Ranked

The 1970s were a turning point for war movies. Coming after Vietnam and amid widespread political disillusionment, filmmakers grew far less interested in triumphalism and far more willing to interrogate authority, ideology, and the psychic cost of violence. As a result, war films from this decade often feel angrier, stranger, and more morally unstable than those that came before.

The best of these movies stare directly at war’s contradictions: camaraderie alongside cruelty, bravery alongside absurdity, and meaning constantly eroded by chaos. Here are the best war movies from the 1970s, ranked based on their legacies to the genre, enduring appeal, and overall quality.

10 ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ (1970)

"Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves?" Unlike many of the other titles on this list, Kelly’s Heroes is a war movie that deliberately sidesteps solemnity in favor of irreverence and satire. Set during World War II, it follows a group of American soldiers who learn about a hidden cache of Nazi gold behind enemy lines. Rather than focusing on official objectives, they decide to stage an unauthorized mission to steal it. The soldiers are not motivated by patriotism so much as survival, greed, and boredom.

From here, the plot unfolds like a caper, complete with clashing personalities, improvised plans, and frequent clashes with military bureaucracy. The movie blends the expected combat sequences with countercultural humor, using anachronistic attitudes to critique blind obedience. It helps that the cast is so great. Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Donald Sutherland all turn in enjoyable performances.

9 ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ (1976)

"This is a soldier’s job." Donald Sutherland also lends a winning performance to this tense World War II thriller. The Eagle Has Landed tells the story of a fictional German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill by infiltrating a quiet English village disguised as Allied troops. The story alternates perspectives between the German commandos executing the plan and the locals who begin to sense something is wrong. Director John Sturges treats both sides with surprising nuance, portraying the German soldiers as disciplined professionals rather than caricatures.

The movie succeeds because it's both suspenseful and rich in character. In addition to Sutherland, there are also fantastic performances from Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter, and Donald Pleasence. All in all, it's a fairly straightforward but well-crafted adventure, with more than enough action and sharp humor to keep the viewer engaged. This recipe resonated on release, and The Eagle Has Landed was a huge box office success.

8 ‘Midway’ (1976)

"This is not a drill." Midway is an old-school war epic with a few rough edges (and some historical inaccuracies), but enough spectacle and grandeur to compensate. It dramatizes the pivotal World War II naval battle between American and Japanese forces, weaving together multiple storylines across commanders, pilots, and strategists. It very much aims for scale, moving rapidly between preparation, intelligence failures, and the chaos of aerial combat.

Watching it now, Midway's dialogue is often a little clunky and cliched, and the use of stock footage is a bit heavy-handed. It's all stylistically dated. That said, it is interesting from a thematic standpoint, since it reflects a genre in transition. While it retains the patriotic framework of earlier war films, the tone of Midway is more somber and procedural. It attempts balance, too, depicting the Japanese perspective with seriousness rather than demonization, standing as one of the last large-scale traditional epics before the genre fully embraced ambiguity.

7 ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ (1971)

"I can’t feel my arms." In stark contrast to Midway is Johnny Got His Gun, one of the most harrowing anti-war movies of its decade. It centers on a young soldier (Timothy Bottoms) who survives a World War I battlefield explosion but is left without arms, legs, sight, hearing, or the ability to speak. Trapped inside his mind, he relives memories of his past while desperately trying to communicate that he is still conscious. Most of the film unfolds through internal monologue and fragmented flashbacks, making for a suffocating psychological experience.

War here isn't some distant social force but something with immediate, personal consequences, the annihilation of identity and agency. Johnny Got His Gun doesn't attempt to soften this message or put a hopeful spin on it. There is no redemption arc, no moral balance, only prolonged suffering and institutional indifference. Grim but powerful viewing.

6 ‘The Boys from Company C’ (1978)

"This ain’t no movie." While nowhere near as devastating as Johnny Got His Gun, The Boys from Company C likewise offers a ground-level view of war (in this case, Vietnam) that feels stripped of mythology. We follow a group of Marines from boot camp through combat, focusing on how military training and leadership failures shape their experiences. It's a film that avoids grand battles, instead emphasizing confusion, exhaustion, and moral compromise.

Conflict here is defined by miscommunication and futility, where orders often make no sense and consequences are paid by those with the least power. This message is brought home by the impressive attention to detail. Small moments, like casual cruelty, nervous jokes, and quiet despair, accumulate into a devastating portrait of institutional neglect. In the end, while The Boys from Company C lacks the operatic ambition of some of its contemporaries, it stands out with its dedication to realism.

5 ‘Catch-22’ (1970)

"There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22." Catch-22 is perhaps the best depiction of war as absurdity. Adapted from Joseph Heller’s classic novel, it follows U.S. bomber pilots during World War II trapped in a bureaucratic paradox: they can only be grounded for insanity if they request it, but requesting it proves they are sane. This kind of circular logic is ever-present in Catch-22's vision of military life. The movie embraces surrealism and dark humor, allowing repetition and contradiction to replace linear progression.

In other words, this is a war film whose intensity isn't found in combat but rather in psychological entrapment. Characters are not destroyed by bullets so much as by paperwork and shifting regulations. Through all this, Catch-22 articulates a uniquely modern anxiety: that systems designed to protect people often exist only to perpetuate themselves. Its comedy is sharp, but its worldview is bleak, making it a defining expression of 1970s disillusionment.

4 ‘Cross of Iron’ (1977)

"We are soldiers." Cross of Iron is a ferocious Eastern Front war film from director Sam Peckinpah, a master of bloody cinema. Interestingly, it's told from the perspective of German soldiers. The movie centers on the internal conflict between a hardened frontline sergeant (James Coburn) and an ambitious aristocratic officer (Maximillian Schell) seeking recognition. Rather than focusing on ideology, the film depicts war as attrition, ego, and survival.

Peckinpah brings his trademark brutality to the battlefield, emphasizing chaos, exhaustion, and moral erosion. Violence is sudden and ugly, denying any sense of strategic elegance. Several scenes are incredibly hard-hitting. That said, the film's real strength is arguably its complex characterization and refusal to frame its combatants as noble or monstrous. These men fight because they are trapped, not because they believe. All in all, Cross of Iron's messiness and bitterness feel distinctly post-Vietnam, even when depicting World War II.

3 ‘Patton’ (1970)

"Nobody ever defended anything successfully; there is only attack and attack and attack some more." George C. Scott won the Best Actor Oscar for his lead performance here as the famous World War II general, and for good reason. He's absolutely captivating in the part, portraying Patton as brilliant, volatile, and deeply contradictory. He and Franklin J. Schaffner resist simple hero worship, allowing Patton’s arrogance and obsession with glory to coexist with tactical genius. They are just as interested in Patton's professional missteps and controversial behavior as his military successes.

It all adds up to a portrait of a man shaped by war and incapable of existing without it. The film’s famous opening monologue sets the tone, framing combat as both destiny and curse for its protagonist. Patton is kind of like Lawrence of Arabia in that it's a huge epic with a colorful character at its heart whose personality is never dwarfed by the scale of everything around him.

2 ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978)

"One shot." The Deer Hunter is a war film about the damage that never fully heals. The main characters are a group of working-class friends from a Pennsylvania steel town whose lives are shattered by the Vietnam War. The movie tells their story across three sections: life before the war, the trauma of combat, and the hollow aftermath. This gives it time and space to really invest emotionally in the protagonists. The long scenes of ritual and friendship make the later scenes of devastation all the more visceral.

The infamous Russian roulette sequences are terrifying not just for their violence, but for what they represent: the replacement of meaning with chance. It rams home how destabilizing conflict can be, to the point that it makes the universe feel senseless and adrift. It was challenging, controversial material to handle right, but the talented stars more than pull it off. Robert De Niro, Jon Savage, John Cazale, and Meryl Streep were all acclaimed for their performances, and Christopher Walken took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

1 ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)

"The horror… the horror." Only one movie was ever going to claim the top spot on this list. Apocalypse Now is the defining war film of the 1970s precisely because it abandons realism in favor of psychological immersion. Loosely inspired by Heart of Darkness, the story follows a U.S. Army officer (Martin Sheen) tasked with assassinating a renegade colonel (Marlon Brando) deep in the jungles of Vietnam. This mission becomes a surreal odyssey through escalating madness, where authority collapses, and violence becomes ritualized.

In the process, Francis Ford Coppola transforms war into a hallucination, filled with spectacle, sound, and dread. Each encounter feels unmoored from logic, reflecting the moral disintegration at the heart of the conflict. By the end, the mission itself feels meaningless. The movie's ambitious aesthetics and troubled production perfectly fit with these themes. As its director once said, "My movie is not about Vietnam. My movie is Vietnam."