Content Warning: This article discusses suicide, abuse, murder, and sexual assault.

While war movies are often understandably brutal, the best entries into the genre feature devastating endings that effectively capture the futility and bleak brutality of war. War is hell. However, viewers of war movies might understandably come to another conclusion depending on which entries into the genre they consume. A shocking number of war movies portray war as a tragic inevitability, a chance for glory and honor amidst bloodshed, or a necessity that keeps empires alive. Luckily, some of the best and bleakest war movies can counteract this propaganda and offer a realistic depiction of war’s horrific impact on human lives.

The best war movies disregard the rules of the genre and focus on the horrors that conflict visits upon communities ravaged by bloodshed. From an early Stanley Kubrick masterpiece about the execution of WWI soldiers to a pair of pitilessly grim Vietnam movies, some of the greatest war movies of all time feature the genre’s darkest endings. These war movies are not for the faint of heart and depict war crimes with unsparing accuracy. However, they are a necessary corrective to the many romanticized war movies that propagate what the poet Wilfred Owens called the great lie, that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

10 Full Metal Jacket

1987’s Full Metal Jacket is a movie of two halves. The first act of Kubrick’s clinical Vietnam movie takes place in a boot camp, where R Lee Ermey’s relentless drill instructor wages a psychological war against Vincent D’Onofrio's Private Pyle. This ends with Pyle turning his rifle on the instructor and then himself, after which the surviving troops are sent to Vietnam. There, most of the squadron is wiped out by an unseen sniper. The sniper that killed out most of the squad is revealed to be a little girl. Full Metal Jacket’s hero Joker “Mercy” kills her before leading the troops in a singalong of Mickey Mouse March.

9 Platoon

Director Oliver Stone’s unerringly accurate Platoon is one of the most realistic war movies ever, thanks to the helmer’s experience during the Vietnam War. For most of its runtime, Platoon follows the internal divisions in a squad of soldiers fighting in the American invasion of Vietnam. Eventually, both the outright villainous and comparatively naive troops alike are killed in an onslaught. This sequence ends with Charlie Sheen’s Chris able to return home thanks to his two injuries. He breaks down as he is airlifted off the battlefield, staring down at mountains of bloody corpses.

8 Grave Of The Fireflies

1988’s Grave of the Fireflies is a rare animated war movie. Based on the short story by Akiyuki Nosaka, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of two young orphans traveling across Japan. As they attempt to survive the last weeks of World War II, Seita and Setsuko fantasize about a time when they will be able to eat again and live in relative comfort. That time never comes as Seita and Setsuko suffer the same fate as so many children did throughout WWII. Grave of the Fireflies ends when both the movie's child heroes die of starvation.

7 All Quiet On The Western Front

For much of All Quiet On The Western Front’s runtime, the 2022 remake plays out like so many earlier war movies. There is camaraderie among the likable troops, talk of life after the war, and desperate attempts to survive the melee of conflict. However, All Quiet On The Western Front proves that there is no glory in war during its final act. One by one, every major character dies in the closing act of this tragedy. All Quiet On The Western Front’s Albert dies while trying to surrender, and Tjaden commits suicide after seeing the extent of his injuries. Meanwhile, Paul is bayoneted and dies from his wounds.

6 The Brest Fortress

The defense of Brest Fortress was a tremendously significant event in the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. A surprise attack, the Nazi invasion of Brest Fortress, cost the German side an unanticipated number of casualties as Soviet troops fiercely defended their territory. The attack was one of the earliest instances of Russia’s military defeating the Nazis and badly damaging ’s war machine. However, any triumphant element of this history is nowhere to be seen in 2010’s The Brest Fortress. A Russian Belarusian coproduction, The Brest Fortress ends with Nazi forces killing all of the historical siege’s remaining heroes.

5 Son Of Saul

2015’s Son of Saul is a rare movie that manages to make the story of Schindler’s List seem comparatively upbeat. In an unbearably tense tragedy, the Son of Saul sees a Jewish concentration camp prisoner attempt to locate a rabbi who will help him bury a dead child. Most of Son of Saul’s runtime is dedicated to Sauk’s nail-biting search and the many close calls his odyssey entails. However, in the end, it is all for nothing. The child’s corpse never gets a Jewish burial and is lost in a river. The rabbi is a fraud. Saul is killed by Nazi prison camp guards.

4 Gallipoli

Released in 1981, Gallipoli stars Mark Lee and Mel Gibson as two Australian sprinters who sign up to the army in search of glory. Instead, the pair have their dreams dashed when they are faced with the brutal realities of war. It takes Archy and Frank most of the movie’s runtime to even reach the battlefield, and the pair go through many colorful adventures on their way there. Then the two young recruits die almost as soon as they enter the war, with Gallipoli’s closing moments depicting Archy and Frank howling in agony as they are shot to death.

3 Come And See

While Apocalypse Now famously used trippy imagery to bring the horror of war to life onscreen, that classic is nowhere near as strange and startling as Come and See. A 1985 Soviet movie, Come and See, tells the story of the young, idealistic Flyora. His quiet countryside life is torn sunder when invading Nazis destroy Flyora’s home village, murdering townspeople and gang-raping a young girl. Captured, the Nazis are shot to death, and their corpses are burnt as a despondent Flyora marches off with his comrades in Come and See’s crushing closing scene.

2 Paths Of Glory

In Paths of Glory, Kirk Douglas plays Dax, a commanding officer who defends his unit of French troops from charges of cowardice. This leads to a drawn-out power play that, in the end, proves pointless. The three soldiers who are charged with cowardice are executed despite Dax’s attempts to gain them a pardon. In the final scene of Paths of Glory, Dax leaves his remaining soldiers drinking in an inn without warning them that they will return to the front the next day.

1 Play Dirty

1969’s Play Dirty was director Andre de Toth’s attempt to redress the heroic narrative popularized by The Dirty Dozen. This war movie also sees a crew of cynical convicts unite against the German army, but its story is not so idealistic and glamorous. The crew blows up the German fuel depot, but all but two of them are caught and killed in the process. The two survivors come across British officers and, since they are still disguised as Germans, are shot dead before they can surrender and explain. Even among war movies, Play Dirty is notable for its realistically bleak depiction of war.