As a fellow military history enthusiast, what movies annoy you with their inaccuracy? Which movies do you enjoy for their accuracy?

Posted 11Sep2017.

Annoyingly inaccurate:

Pearl Harbor (2001) – this movie should have been titled A Few Good Reasons to Hate Ben Affleck and Michael Bay. Seriously – Bay thought he could tack on the name of the attack which brought us directly into the Second World War to one of the lousiest war movies ever without backlash from reputable folks? Every December 7th, I message the movie poster to a friend who used to be a Park Ranger at the USS Arizona memorial only out of good-natured malice. Worst movie ever, solely for the dishonorable inaccuracies.

Firebirds (1990) – words fail me, but I shall try… more than this movie ever did at anything but sucking. I was halfway into my rant on Pearl Harbor when this one popped into my mind and I would say that Firebirds is right on up there for suckage. The redeeming fact that this one didn’t get “worst movie ever” is only because it was fictional and not based on anything remotely resembling reality. My crewchief/medic buddies who are now Apache pilots have threatened bodily harm every time I ask them if they would sign a copy for me (yeah, I’m that friend…you have a button, I shall find it and push the hell out of it… then buy you a drink and laugh.)

Iron Eagle (1986) – I really have to stop thinking of movies that piss me off only because I am trying to get a bit more life out of this heavily-abused keyboard. I even look at the title of this movie and I get annoyed. Nothing good here… move on.

Enemy at the Gates (2001) – look, just because I like my weekly abuse sessions via 7.62x54r milsurps doesn’t mean I won’t stand for the abuse of your immediate statement of “Oh, like Enemy at the Gates?” I distinctly remember seeing the trailer and becoming instantly excited within the first 10 seconds – I knew the story of Vassili Zaitsev (I read a lot), and I had grown weary of the same battles being played out on the big screen over and over again. This was to be an exciting departure. This was going to be astounding… THAT film turned out to be the entertainment industry’s equivalent to tourist-trap borsht.

Kelly’s Heroes (1970) – I really hate putting this one on the “inaccurate” list due to my love for the goofball characters and the plausible idea of going behind German lines to steal gold (something that I would easily violate my own ethics code to do). However, yeah… funny as it was, I have to place it here.

Enjoyably accurate:

Battle for Sevastopol (2015) – this is tied for “best war movie” only to Saving Private Ryan and goes to the top of this list for the historic accuracy of Lyudmila Pavlichenko’s story. Yes, there are some horrible errors in casting (the real Pavlichenko was the antipode of attractiveness to Yulia Pereslid), the timeline, and the laughable lack of recoil of the 91/30 props, but this has been one of the most consistent movies I have watched, other than Tora, Tora, Tora.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) – the woman I was sitting next to went fetal halfway through the invasion scene and left before they breached the obstacles. Veterans needed call centers to cope with flashbacks. The cast hated Matt Damon because he was excused from the ultra-realistic training they were subjected to. Throwing a pistol and helmet is completely plausible. Getting choked up when CPT Miller tells PVT Ryan that he has to “earn this.” Yeah. Damn. ‘Nuff said.

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) – I had to stop the movie several times due to the inevitable “Medevac! Medevac! Medevac!” call while I was at FOB Speicher in 2007. This was a good thing, because – oddly enough – the interruptions gave me time to reflect. There are very few movies telling a plausible story from the perspective of the combatants we have fought in the past, and this one set the bar for any future efforts along those lines. Never have I been so conflicted as to the humanity of warfare by a movie, and that is the level of emotion that helps foster an understanding of the futility and inevitability of warfare.

Black Hawk Down (2001) – I have covered this movie before, and I am on the fence about the accuracy of it. When it came to the portrayal of some of the aspects of the venerable UH-60, I cringed and rolled my eyes. Having read the book, it fits the narrative of the events as I understand them, but the film missed several opportunities to flesh out more details for the action it captured. Accurate, but sorta “meh…” in my opinion.

Tora, Tora, Tora (1970) – we don’t do movies to this scale, anymore. It is too easy to just CGI a bunch of ships in a visually impressive and massive formation, the clouds of aircraft as the action transitions, and the chaotic and dazzling explosions which result. Ascetically pleasing, but intellectually numbing. This movie was one of many which struggled to maintain the scope of the battle with the limitations of the day, and it fared well. Perhaps it is the result of basically following the philosophy of “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it fantastically,” rather than the “Hey, no big deal. We can CGI more things blowing up to make more money.”

These were off the top of my head, really – other than looking up the release dates. There are plenty other films I could ramble on about, but I think five of each is enough to keep your eyes from glazing over…