10 Incredible War Movies About Doomed Missions

Boasting the considerable talents of Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan, 2016's Anthropoid is based on a daring plot by Czech resistance fighters to assassinate high-ranking SS official Reinhard Heydrich at the height of WWII.

Ironically, Anthropoid is an outlier among its peers in the sense that the movie's central mission technically succeeded. Heydrich did indeed die from his wounds after Jozef Gabćík and Jan Kubiš successfully detonated a grenade under his limousine.

However, there was to be no happy ending for the would-be assassins. The resistance fighters and their allies were betrayed and cornered in Prague's famous Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral shortly after their successful attack on Heydrich. Eventually overwhelmed by countless enemy forces, every member of the mission was either killed in the fighting or took their own lives to avoid capture.

Despite the film's ultimately tragic subject matter - or perhaps because of it - Anthropoid cements itself as one of the most essential films centred around the Second World War released in the last two decades. An initially slow-burn offering that suddenly nails the accelerator to the floor as its final act begins, Sean Ellis' poignant take on this ill-fated mission stands as a respectful tribute to the men who inspired the movie. Academy Award-winner Murphy and Dornan are both on top form throughout proceedings, with their star power serving to gloss over some of the film's more prevalent shortcomings.