10 Most Important War Films Ever Made

By the time 1998's Saving Private Ryan was released, America's love affair with war movies was in a strange and undecided period.

Where the last decade had seen everyone from a clinical Kubrick to an angry Oliver Stone to more experimental and enigmatic Adrian Lyne portray the perils of Vietnam as various forms of dehumanising nightmares and tragedies, the last decade of the millennium saw filmmakers shy away from traditional war film.

The romanticised history of Braveheart and meditative approach of Terrence Mallick's The Thin Red Line were far from protest films or propaganda, and the war film was on the verge of irrelevance.

Then Jaws helmer Steven Spielberg's unforgettably intense and unapologetically visceral Saving Private Ryan arrived in cinemas to strip the glamour away from World War 2, showing the true horrors of the war from start to finish.

By the end of its gruelling opening sequence half the cast were in pieces, and the shuddering handheld camerawork, gruesome makeup effects, and heart thumping editing had changed the cinematic image of war forever.