@Jennifer1984 Said
There is no such thing as a "good" war movie that celebrates or glorifies war or the men who take part in it.
Schindler's List is an example of an acceptable war film in that, among the godawful carnage, it shows how a man can rise above the horror being carried out all around him and do something decent at great risk to himself.
Private Ryan became too Gung-Ho and lost all sense of Noble Purpose with its lurid and blatantly chauvinistic Omaha Beach beginning, and the climactic final battle scene. In the end, SPR strays from it's initial theme of "Noble Purpose" and becomes just another kill-fest. This is a shame because the Captain Miller character was, at heart, a decent man but he was the only one in the group he led, who truly understood the mission for what it was. The fact that he was constantly having to control his own men, who saw no good in what they were doing, says much about the de-humanising effect of war among the common soldiery. If SPR makes any point at all, it's that.
Some war movies expose other kinds of horror and although they are stomach churning to watch do serve a sobering purpose..... to demonstrate how utterly dreadful war is. Into this category, I think, fall "Soldier Blue" and "The Killing Fields".
Soldier Blue told a bogus love story, but that was just filler material inserted as a lead up to the sickening depiction of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. Purely by coincidence, it ran in cinemas around the time that news of the My Lai massacre broke and became all the more notorious for that.
The Killing Fields told of the friendship between an American journalist and his Cambodian liaison officer as the Nixon bombing programme created the conditions for the murderous Khmer Rouge regime to take over the country.
War is bad. Bad, bad, bad. It is true that genuine heroes do arise during conflict, but as in Schindler's List and the Killing Fields, they're not the ones with guns.
They're the ones attempting to save lives. Not end them.
How should have Hitler been handled then?