Really Good War Movies (CM Scenario Inspiration)

[sburke]

not a classic "war" movie, but a great film on urban guerilla warfare and pretty accurate - Battle of Algiers. (and not gonna generate any CM scenarios  )

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by sburke

[JulianJ]

I'd like to add this to the list: it's on Youtube for free - the 2019 Russian Film "Tankers".  It's not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it. I think you have to suspend your "military geekness" and not mind the Pz IVs are not 1942 variants (they seem to be full size vismods, not cleverly-done 1/6 R/C tanks, which I thought at first). 

I won't say anything about the plot for the sake of spoilers, but I thought the characters are well-drawn; because there is a female Russian tank repair engineer there is a romantic element which adds some light and shade to the often all-male war film type.

The main tank is a real KV1.  Loved that. It seems surprisingly roomy inside . Lots of T34s. There's a lot of the mundane aspect of tank warfare: bogging down in a stream and mechanical issues which make a change from many other films. Several scenes take place while the crew are re-ammunitioning the tank which I found a clever use of drama and realism.

 

[Erwin]

Oh yes... Forgot about that one.  Tankers was kinda fun with the female tank engineer etc.  And I agree the star was the KV1 tank(s).

1 hour ago, JulianJ said:

It seems surprisingly roomy inside 

Heh... the movable walls that all sets have must help.  

[JM Stuff]

Trailer only !

 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by JM Stuff

[Warts 'n' all]

5 hours ago, JulianJ said:

I'd like to add this to the list: 

 

Ah, yer can't whack a bit ov good ol' rhyming slang, as Del Boy would say.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Warts 'n' all

[John Kettler]

Local Skirmish seems to me to be a CM natural fit, for it's low level tactical combat, well depicted. The life and death fight that ensues is almost a nothing viewed from a higher command perspective, hence the brutally both ironic and accurate title. It's Russian with English subtitles, so free language lesson!  
 

 LongLeftFlank,

Something went wrong, and you wounbd up with anything but the bedraggled US Army of the 1970s. Hadn't seen King Peter, but just noticed it moments ago in my YT sidebar. An endorsement from you is huge.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

If you don't mind breaking down an epic war film into CM sized chunks, may I recommend the monumental Battle of Neretva? Based on a crucial battle which did take place and pitted Tito's partisans against Germans, Italian and Chetniks, this has many action which could be treated as discrete CM fights. 

If you haven't seen the probably 1000+ person, astounding Battle of Neretva, featuring a breathtaking cast list, spectacular terrain, lots of different structures ranging from huts to multi-story buildings and big churches, then are you in for a unique experience, starting with location (the Balkans, specifically, Yugoslavia). Has multiple nationalities all speaking in their languages (English subtitles throughout) , so much military hardware the Internet Firearms Data Base missed lots of it, including VISMODs (VISusal MODifications; think SPR Tiger 1) and AFVs I couldn't identify at all, lots of usual and unusual artillery, combat of every size and sort. This movie was made in the late 1960s, before digital FX, so the human hordes are real people, not clones of a few. The print's not very good, but gets better later in the film. Based on my own experience, it won't take long before you're so swept up in the film you really don't pay much attention to image quality.
 

Regards,

John Kettler

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, John Kettler said:

Hadn't seen King Peter, but just noticed it moments ago in my YT sidebar. An endorsement from you is huge.

Regards,

John Kettler

It's well acted, shot and choreographed, but also very rah rah Serb nationalist and sentimental and the second half is a bit slow (ok, ok, we get it, it's COLD!) But as you know, Serbs define themselves culturally by their many many many glorious defeats in their rugged borderlands (Krajina), caught between Imperial Central Europe (Rome, then Austria) and the Imperial Orient (Byzantium, then Turkey). Between waves of pastoral nomads from the steppes.

But for nonstop unrelentingly awful Miseries of War*, nothing but nothing can beat "Fires on the Plain", 1959 (Japanese, subtitles).  Being repeatedly on the receiving end of massive US firepower (Leyte, Feb 1945) doesn't even make the Top Ten ordeals faced by poor dorky and hapless hetai Tomura. It all starts getting blackly comic toward the end.  (The 2015 remake is nowhere near as good).

Please note there is no CM scenario material whatsoever to be had in this film.

Guy Sajer: [nonstop horrible Ostfront stuff happens, Rollbahn E to Dresden]

Tomura:  here, hold my sake (or uncooked yams)

 

*  Although in terms of unrelentingly depressing evil with a side order of banality, "Wannsee Conference" (1984) comes close. It's available online, but I'm not linking to it here. Some stuff is a just little too Beyond the Pale. Same thing goes for that stupid SS revisionist film (even though the Italian actresses are totally hawt).

 

Edited June 24, 2021 by LongLeftFlank

[JM Stuff]

1 hour ago, John Kettler said:

If you don't mind breaking down an epic war film into CM sized chunks, may I recommend the monumental Battle of Neretva? Based on a crucial battle which did take place and pitted Tito's partisans against Germans, Italian and Chetniks, this has many action which could be treated as discrete CM fights. 

If you haven't seen the probably 1000+ person, astounding Battle of Neretva, featuring a breathtaking cast list, spectacular terrain, lots of different structures ranging from huts to multi-story buildings and big churches, then are you in for a unique experience, starting with location (the Balkans, specifically, Yugoslavia). Has multiple nationalities all speaking in their languages (English subtitles throughout) , so much military hardware the Internet Firearms Data Base missed lots of it, including VISMODs (VISusal MODifications; think SPR Tiger 1) and AFVs I couldn't identify at all, lots of usual and unusual artillery, combat of every size and sort. This movie was made in the late 1960s, before digital FX, so the human hordes are real people, not clones of a few. The print's not very good, but gets better later in the film. Based on my own experience, it won't take long before you're so swept up in the film you really don't pay much attention to image quality.
 

Regards,

John Kettler

"My" scenario but ...when I will be ready, and have all infos that I need... partisans are present now...from Russia, France Yougoslavia...!

 

JM

[JM Stuff]

22 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

I take the opportunity to remind you that I did something for you in my JM dropbox, and waiting to change it eventually, if you dont need nothing more, let me know this will be kind of you !

Amical

JM

[JM Stuff]

I like this thread, we don't have to searching on the net to a good movie, to check eventually on the evening, but only to have the faith to our friends on the forum, where probably there will be one that we will like ! ! 

JM

[John Kettler]

If doing a war film, such as the aptly named The Hot Snow, it helps if the Soviet MoD fully supports it!  That way, you can use the Poligon,  considerable amounts of real HE to blow things apart, field dozens of anachronistic VISMOD Tiger 1s (almost certainly first used in Liberation docudrama), also anachronistic T-34/85s (subs for T-34/76s) in enormous numbers, deploy hordes of real Red Army troops from the Moscow Military District and the Siberian Military District, field horse drawn gun teams, artillery tractors, big nasty guns, even Katyushas! This lets you build an extremely credible and progressively demolished battlefield in ways Hollywood couldn't even dream about. The scope is vast, but for all the weighty decisions made, the film revolves around the tip of the defensive spearhead.  Here is small unit combat par excellence. Have seen this film now twice, and the more often I see it, the more I notice. It's based around a Russian novel, and that guy seems to know war: command, command style, choosing the ground, operational situation, Schwerpunkt, small unit dynamics and so much more. I imagine the novel would be the Russian equivalent of the Cross of Iron, but with far greater sweep. Am having embedding issues, but the YT link for it works. Russian with English subtitles.

Edited June 24, 2021 by John Kettler

[Probus]

I too am really enjoying this thread. I'm still way back at the Zhukov series, but this is awesome. 

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

"Wannsee Conference" (1984) comes close. It's available online, but I'm not linking to it here. Some stuff is a just little too Beyond the Pale.

What do you mean @LongLeftFlank? Too much propaganda?

Here is one I enjoyed as a kid:

The Green Berets (with John Wayne)

I really remember the 'Puff the Magic Dragon' (AC-47) scene above. 

[JM Stuff]

 

 

This one is to let a smile to @umlaut ,Dennis this one is for you ! 

JM

[John Kettler]

Probus,

Wannsee Conference isn't a war movie per se. It's a chilling, deeply disturbing film about a multi-day conference in which the Nazis set up the structure of a systematic program of genocide directed against Jews, the Roma, gays, and more. It's an unflinching look at the banality of evil, expressed in detailed and specific allocations of tasks, resource requirements, system throughput, economic value obtained from the dead, transport requirements, expressed as trains per day, railroad requirements which were competing with the needs of German military logistics, etc.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Something I wanted to note ref the Russian war movies and series in which there is a love interest, competition for females and such. Unlike the US and most forces, the Red Army had female combat medics, plus nurses and doctors at all levels. Women also served on AFVs, gun and mortar crews, antiaircraft crews, infantry, in comms, in supply, as mechanics, artificers, traffic direction, MPs, as snipers and more, including a tiny, relative to the Red Air Force, contingent of fighter and bomber pilots, other aircrew, ground crews and such.  Further, you had dancers, singers and musicians traveling about and doing USO type shows for the troops. Unlike Hollywood, which arbitrarily sticks a romance into a movie to make it appealing to women, in the Red Army things happened organically. I have a book on my shelf right now in which the commander of a half platoon and later a platoon of regimental guns connected so strongly with a nurse who cared for him after he was seriously wounded that they married during the war! Further, because of where her field hospital happened to be positioned, he got to see her a number of times during the war, too. I know of another case in which a husband and wife were on the same ISU-122 crew, she as commander and he as driver mechanic. There is a transcript of an ongoing navigation argument as to how to reach the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin. Encounters with women in the Red Army occurred at a vastly higher rate, but likewise, I'll be the first to admit that the hottie count in the Russian war movies and TV series is not generally borne out by available imagery of many of these ladies! That the GPW was a horror beyond measure for those on the sharp end I don't dispute, but I can't help thinking about how the presence of so many women was beneficial to those men and that it made real and immediate the very notion of fighting to save the sacred Rodina. The Motherland!

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

The Liberation docudrama is absolutely awash with CM inspiration, because so much combat is depicted at all levels. The first one is Kursk, and the series runs clear through the Battle of Berlin. The might of the Red Army is massively displayed here in this series, not least in enormous tank formations attacking you'll not find anywhere else but a ComBloc war pic or TV show. It's one thing to read about a tank attack or even see one at ground level, but to see a vast sea of tanks from the air is another matter altogether.  The tanks aren't always period correct, and the Germans are VISMODs of varying degrees of fidelity, sometimes straight up Soviet tanks, too, but the single biggest issue in the visuals is that there's not a GPW combat aircraft to be seen, just trainers. Sigh. The problem is that this movie series, for that's what it is, each one a full length film, was released in 1970, by which time the GPW combat aircraft were long gone. That left Yak trainers of 1950s vintage. Don't know why, unlike the Red Army, the Red Air Force didn't maintain GPW warbird stocks. Maybe because they're harder to maintain and lack the impact of tanks parading past the reviewing stand? The link is good.
 

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

They Fought for the Motherland, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk who directed the 8-hour War and Peace that cost $100,000,00 in then-year dollars and had 40,000 Red Army soldiers in it, follows a Rifle Regiment in the run up to the Battle of Stalingrad. The shoot location had to be moved when digging entrenchments turned up bones of the war head and lots of UXO. Another one for which the link is good but Mosfilm blocks embedding! 
 

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

As Russian war movies go, this is pretty much brand new (2015). The Road to Berlin is a beautifully crafted, at times, moving film. It is full of CM goodness, albeit only part of the story. ONe of the more interesting CM aspects is that you can see a HUnt order being executed. What it has, that The Burning Snow does not, are some very good VISMODS and adaptations for earlier German armor and what appear to be real T-34/76s. Link's good.It's in Russian, with English subtitles.
 

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited June 26, 2021 by John Kettler

[Probus]

How do you know about all these great Ruskie War Movies @John Kettler?!?

[John Kettler]

1 hour ago, Probus said:

How do you know about all these great Ruskie War Movies @John Kettler?!?

Probus,

Got into them initially by way of seeing a number of GPW series on Amazon Prime and branched out from there. Overall, I find GPW movies and series from Russia, Belarus and elsewhere to be far superior to what Hollywood produces, with the added advantages of new terrain, new stories, new culture/s, considerable amounts of period weapons and hardware. In these, too, there are factors at work not generally found in western war stuff: spies, denunciations, NKVD, Special Department and more. Most of these films and series also show what it's like to wage war on own turf, something we in the US have almost no experience of. Often, during the GPW, your own people are more dangerous than the Germans, and if you're some sort of a general, you may find yourself in hot water with Stalin!  StarMediaEN on YT is a great resource, but there are others, too. Have even watched some GPW movies with no English subtitles and been able to somewhat follow things by observing how people speak, act, react and so on. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Just to show I'm not always serious when it comes to films and series about the Soviet or, later, Russian military, here's a 2000 comedy or black comedy. Regardless, it would've been viewed as outright subversive and dealt with accordingly in the Soviet Union. Frankly, I'm amazed it was allowed under Putin, for it does NOT paint Russian young men, or the Russian military, in a good light at all. To the contrary, it skewers some of the worst traits, including pandemic drunkenness, spousal abuse, the grandfather system, and the general bleak pointlessness and corruption of Russian military life. Even so, the movie was so funny I repeatedly choked from laughing so hard! I thoroughly enjoyed this wildly original take at a soldier's life in someone non-US's military, and would say the state of the Red Army in this movie is on par with the shape the US Army was in during the 1970s--terrible. Russian with English subtitles.
 

Regards,

John Kettler
 

[Erwin]

Made in 2000.  Maybe they had more of a sense of humor back then.  

[John Kettler]

11 hours ago, Erwin said:

Made in 2000.  Maybe they had more of a sense of humor back then.  

Erwin,

Suspect the reason this was allowed was because Putin was still solidifying his regime at the foundational level and was simply too busy with that. Seriously doubt this would be allowed today. Would be instantly branded anti-Russian, and harsh consequences would follow. Did you watch it yet?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Erwin]

No.  I got the idea.  Seen similar send-ups of US and UK military since the 60's.