20 Best War Movies Released Since 2000

20. Oppenheimer (2023)

Many war movies are set on the battlefield, but recent trends have seen more war flicks take place away from the action, focussed on the behind-the-scenes elements of battle than the battles themselves. 

Oppenheimer represents this trend's zenith, taking an intense and intimate look at the construction of the atomic bomb at the end of WWII, as masterminded by J. Robert Oppenheimer (a chilling Cillian Murphy).

Directed by Chris Nolan, Oppenheimer is a galvanising character study of a man haunted by his creation but unable to atone for the pain it inflicted, as well as a searing portrait of paranoia and the desperation of the US government to end the war, as they saw it, by any horrific means necessary. 

With pulverising sound design and an impossibly stacked cast, Oppenheimer serves as a stark reminder of how so much of the war's greatest atrocities were overseen by men and women hidden from the spotlight, working in secret to bring the world to its knees in the name of peace.