10 Amazing Movies With Weirdly Distracting Castings

3. Audie Murphy - To Hell And Back (1955)

It might be weird to label the main casting of a film distracting when that's essentially the central conceit, but watching To Hell and Back, it's impossible to silence my brain thinking about not only the behind-the-scenes process that led to Audie Murphy - the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War 2 - playing himself in a film based on his exploits, but also what it must have been like for him to relive those experiences for the purposes of big screen entertainment.

Countless directors and actors who fought in the Second World War would go on to develop and star in films about it - Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One was inspired by his own wartime experiences and starred Lee Marvin, who fought as a sniper in the Pacific theatre, to use just one example out of the dozens available - but to relive the events of the battles they fought in specifically, in a film where they played themselves, is a whole other thing.

The closest example I can think of that isn't To Hell and Back would be The Longest Day, where Richard Todd portrayed Major John Howard having himself fought in the Battle for Pegasus Bridge, but it's still not Murphy playing himself levels of onscreen vulnerability.

In more than one way To Hell and Back is a pretty unremarkable war film, but there's something so unique about seeing Murphy play himself and relive those combat experiences in a more sanitised environment. Murphy's real-life story was remarkable, but there's an uncanny quality seeing it rendered in To Hell and Back.