20 Best War Movies Released Since 2000

What is it exactly that draws us to watch war movies, these cinematic visions so often filled with horror and dread, the worst of humanity and history's sins?

Perhaps it's a desire to honour soldiers who fought for our futures during the Second World War - maybe it's so we can learn something about our future by looking into our past; sometimes it's simply to admire the prowess of a great filmmaker or see our favourite actors in action. 

Whatever the case, audiences have been flocking to war movies since the dawn of cinema itself, and the sheer volume of war pictures has only increased in recent years - many set on the battlefield, many more set far away from the violence, exploring lives nonetheless gripped and shaken and changed by calamity so far, yet so close.

The best war movies reflect the times, tapping into something honest about how war seems so ingrained in the human story, and whilst many glamourise the action by injecting battle scenes and tragedy with stylish filmmaking - as Truffaut said, there's no such thing as an anti-war film - the best of them offer vital and even hopeful messages about who we are even when they fall into sensationalism.

With that in mind, here are the 20 best war movies released since 2000...

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.