4. Captain Virgil Hilts (The Great Escape)
Probably one of the most well known war film characters ever, the lovable Hilts played by the even more lovable Steve McQueen is a match made in heaven. The American airman finds himself in a special German camp, in which they have placed all the best, or worst depending on your viewpoint, allied escape artists. Hilts himself is revealed to have attempted escape from captivity a miraculous 17 times before he even gets to the new camp. His laid back attitude may be a source of irritation to his captors, but to us the viewer, he is the coolest cookie in the jar, and his constant refusal to let the Germans get to him make him one of the most loved characters in the war film genre. Whilst I cannot claim to have jumped on a motorbike over a wire, I have often thought in my mind's eye how I would and where I would end up, but in reality the answers would be I couldn't and hospital. Even with this famous final escape attempt that we see, on his way back to the specially made cooler, he is thrown his baseball with catching mitt, and proceeds once more to show his captors that he will not be beaten. The fact that Hilts is also based on a real character makes him even more of a hero, and one that you cannot help but love.