8 Craziest, Bloodiest & Most Insane Battles in Film History

By Travis Earl / September 14, 2012

5. Paths of Glory

A strong anti-war sentiment runs throughout the films of grandmaster Stanley Kubrick from his first feature Fear and Desire, to Dr. Strangelove, to Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket. So it's no suprise his take on the First World War would pull no punches in depicting the insane futility of trench warfare.

Kubrick hammers home the gruesomeness of running headlong into a barrage of machineguns when he depicts Kirk Douglas' Colonel Dax leading his brigade on an assault of the German forces where no one reaches the German trenches and almost all his men are killed. Rarely has the medium of film captured the existential horror of war in such a stark and unblinking way.