Best War Movies of 2005

Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his unit are sent to the Persian Gulf where they are eager to fight, but are forced to stay back from the action. Swofford struggles with the possibility of his girlfriend cheating on him, and as his mental state deteriorates, his desire to kill increases.

As World War II rages, the elite Sixth Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 American prisoners of war.

Set in 1944, Valiant is a woodland pigeon who wants to become a great hero someday. When he hears they are hiring recruits for the Royal Homing Pigeon Service, he immediately sets out for London. On the way, he meets a smelly but friendly pigeon named Bugsy, who joins him, mainly to get away from clients he cheated in a game of find-the pebble, and helps him sign up for the war.

Debra Winger, Oris Erhuero and Idris Elba star in this drama framed by the Rwandan genocide.

The Gallipoli campaign of World War I was so controversial & devastating, it changed the face of battle forever. Using diaries, letters, photographs and memoirs, acclaimed director, Tolga Ornek, traces the personal journeys of Australian, New Zealand, British and Turkish soldiers, from innocence and patriotism to hardship and heartbreak.

From HBO's "America Undercover." On June 30, 1969, Lt. Jack Hulme was killed in Vietnam, having never met his newborn son. Thirty years later, filmmaker John Hulme finally seeks out what happened to his father, and who he really was. From family members and childhood friends to the soldiers who fought beside him, John tracks down everyone, chasing his fathers ghost across the country. What he discovers is a life that mirrored a generations struggles...husbands vs. wives, soldiers vs. protestors, America vs. Vietnam. But he also finds wounds that are painfully fresh, especially his mothers. Together, using the accounts of first-hand witnesses, they travel back to Vietnam, to the place where Jack spent the last few moments of his life so they can finally come to terms with his death.

During World War II, four Britons tunnel out of a German POW camp. One is killed, two are recaptured and one escapes. Scottish Corporal Nicholas McGrade, the lone escapee, is a slacker and reluctant soldier, but is coerced into the secret MI9 Unit and participates in the facilitation of other escapes. Wills and Jack Rose, the two escapees who were recaptured, are transferred to Colditz, a medieval castle in Saxony which has been refitted as an escape-proof, high security institution to house recitative prisoners who repeatedly attempt to escape. At Rose's request, McGrade looks up Rose's girlfriend in Britain only to find out he is falling in love with her. When the faithful Lizzie rejects the advances of the smitten McGrade, he uses his influence to fake Jack's death so as to clear any obstacles to Lizzie.

Three prisoners, Jack Rose, Tom Willis and Nick McGrade, embark on an heroic plan to escape from a World War Two POW camp. As Rose And Willis are recaptured by the Germans, McGrade manages to traverse their clutches and travels to London to inform Rose's girlfriend of his capture. So begins a complex love story...

Documentary using only original colour footage charts the 12 years from Adolf Hitler's rise to power to the fall of Berlin in 1945. Complemented by eyewitness material, tracks the dramatic transformation of Germany into a Nazi state, looks into Hitler's relationship with his lover Eva Braun and replicates pivotal events, including Nazi rallies, the invasion of Poland, Hitler's meeting with Lloyd George, the horrors of Buchenwald concentration camp, Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto, the Battle of Britain and the fall of Berlin.