War Films of The 80's
by robertcunningham-14378 | created - 01 Apr 2017 | updated - 04 Apr 2017 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Breaker Morant (1980)
PG | 107 min | Drama, History, War
Three Australian lieutenants are court martialed for executing prisoners as a way of deflecting attention from war crimes committed by their superior officers.
Director: Bruce Beresford | Stars: Edward Woodward, Jack Thompson, John Waters, Bryan Brown
Votes: 14,441 | Gross: $7.14M
2. Playing for Time (1980 TV Movie)
150 min | Drama, Music
Female prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp (Auschwitz) are spared from death in return for performing music for their captors.
Directors: Daniel Mann, Joseph Sargent | Stars: Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Alexander, Maud Adams, Christine Baranski
Votes: 2,884
3. The Big Red One (1980)
R | 113 min | Drama, War
A hardened sergeant and the four core members of his infantry unit try to survive World War II as they move from battle to battle throughout Europe.
Director: Samuel Fuller | Stars: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco
Votes: 21,404
4. The Dogs of War (1980)
R | 102 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
Mercenary James Shannon, on a reconnaissance job to the African nation of Zangaro, is tortured and deported. He returns to lead a coup.
Director: John Irvin | Stars: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais
Votes: 9,446
5. The Sea Wolves (1980)
PG | 120 min | Action, History, War
During World War II, British Intelligence brings a crew of ex-soldiers out of retirement, using their age as cover, to take to the seas and pull off an unlikely undercover mission in neutral Goa.
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen | Stars: Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, David Niven, Trevor Howard
Votes: 5,285
6. Eye of the Needle (1981)
R | 112 min | Romance, Thriller, War
A ruthless German spy, trying to get out of Britain with vital information about D-Day, must spend time with a young woman and her crippled husband.
Director: Richard Marquand | Stars: Donald Sutherland, Kate Nelligan, Stephen MacKenna, Philip Martin Brown
Votes: 11,863 | Gross: $17.58M
7. Gallipoli (1981)
PG | 110 min | Adventure, Drama, History
Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey during World War I.
Director: Peter Weir | Stars: Mel Gibson, Mark Lee, Bill Kerr, Harold Hopkins
Votes: 41,991 | Gross: $5.73M
8. Lion of the Desert (1980)
PG | 173 min | Biography, Drama, History
In 1929, Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini appoints General Rodolfo Graziani as colonial governor to Italian Libya with orders to stamp-out all resistance from Libyan nationalists led by rebel guerrilla leader Omar Mukhtar.
Director: Moustapha Akkad | Stars: Anthony Quinn, Oliver Reed, Rod Steiger, Irene Papas
Votes: 17,391 | Gross: $3.27M
9. Southern Comfort (1981)
R | 106 min | Action, Thriller
During a routine exercise, a team of National Guardsmen are threatened by angry and violent locals.
Director: Walter Hill | Stars: Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward, Franklyn Seales
Votes: 21,945 | Gross: $5.00M
10. Taps (I) (1981)
PG | 126 min | Drama
Military cadets take extreme measures to ensure the future of their academy when its existence is threatened by local condo developers.
Director: Harold Becker | Stars: George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton, Ronny Cox, Sean Penn
Votes: 20,107 | Gross: $35.86M
11. Attack Force Z (1981)
Not Rated | 84 min | Action, Drama, History
A group of Australian commandos launch a secret mission against Japanese forces in World War II.
Director: Tim Burstall | Stars: John Phillip Law, Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, Chris Haywood
Votes: 2,722
12. The Final Option (1982)
R | 125 min | Action, Thriller
It's suspected that a peace/anti-nuke organization in UK has some extremists willing to use terrorism. The action will probably be against an embassy in London. The SAS/Special Air Service try to get the organization infiltrated.
Director: Ian Sharp | Stars: Lewis Collins, Judy Davis, Richard Widmark, Edward Woodward
Votes: 3,768 | Gross: $2.67M
13. The Last Blood (1983)
TV-14 | 90 min | Action, Drama, War
During the Vietnam war, an army sergeant rebels against his tyrant commanding officer, whilst they are cut off by the enemy in the jungle. Things get worse for all of them after that.
Director: Antonio Margheriti | Stars: Giancarlo Prete, Antonio Marsina, Luciano Pigozzi, Paul Vance
Votes: 308
14. Uncommon Valor (1983)
R | 105 min | Action, Drama, Thriller
Ten years after his son went M.I.A. in Vietnam, U.S. Marine retired Colonel Jason Rhodes assembles a private rescue team to find Americans held in P.O.W. camps in Laos.
Director: Ted Kotcheff | Stars: Gene Hackman, Patrick Swayze, Robert Stack, Fred Ward
Votes: 11,659 | Gross: $30.50M
15. Under Fire (1983)
R | 128 min | Drama, War
Three journalists in a romantic triangle are involved in political intrigue during the last days of the corrupt Somoza regime in Nicaragua before it falls to a popular revolution in 1979.
Director: Roger Spottiswoode | Stars: Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy
Votes: 8,518 | Gross: $5.70M
16. A Soldier's Story (1984)
PG | 101 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
An African-American officer investigates a murder in a racially charged situation in World War II.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: Howard E. Rollins Jr., Adolph Caesar, Art Evans, David Alan Grier
Votes: 11,412 | Gross: $21.82M
17. Code Name: Wild Geese (1984)
R | 101 min | Action
Commander Robin Wesley, leader of a group of mercenaries, go to the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia to overthrow the dictator, who is a major manufacturer and dealer of the world's opium.
Director: Antonio Margheriti | Stars: Lewis Collins, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Klaus Kinski
Votes: 1,107
18. Combat Shock (1984)
R | 91 min | Drama, Thriller, War
A dangerously disturbed Vietnam veteran struggles with life 15 years after his return home, and slowly falls into insanity from his gritty urban lifestyle.
Director: Buddy Giovinazzo | Stars: Rick Giovinazzo, Veronica Stork, Mitch Maglio, Asaph Livni
Votes: 3,272
19. Missing in Action (1984)
R | 101 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
Colonel Braddock launches a mission deep into the jungles of Vietnam to find the POW camp that he escaped from and free the Americans still held captive there.
Director: Joseph Zito | Stars: Chuck Norris, M. Emmet Walsh, David Tress, Lenore Kasdorf
Votes: 16,551 | Gross: $22.81M
20. Purple Hearts (1984)
R | 116 min | Drama, War
In middle of the Vietnam War, a Navy surgeon and a nurse fall in love. Their affection for one another provides a striking contrast to the violence of warfare.
Director: Sidney J. Furie | Stars: Ken Wahl, Cheryl Ladd, Stephen Lee, Annie McEnroe
Votes: 996 | Gross: $2.08M
21. Red Dawn (1984)
PG-13 | 114 min | Action, Drama, Thriller
It is the dawn of World War III. In the west mountains of America, a group of teenagers band together to defend their town, and their country, from invading Soviet forces.
Director: John Milius | Stars: Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen
Votes: 63,134 | Gross: $38.38M
22. The Killing Fields (1984)
R | 141 min | Biography, Drama, History
A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.
Director: Roland Joffé | Stars: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands
Votes: 59,259 | Gross: $34.70M
23. Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)
R | 100 min | Action, Drama, Thriller
Prequel to the first Missing In Action, set in the early 1980s it shows the capture of Colonel Braddock during the Vietnam war in the 1970s, and his captivity with other American POWs in a brutal prison camp, and his plans to escape.
Director: Lance Hool | Stars: Chuck Norris, Soon-Tek Oh, Steven Williams, Bennett Ohta
Votes: 9,312 | Gross: $10.80M
24. Revolution (1985)
PG | 126 min | Adventure, Drama, History
A trapper and his young son get pulled into the American revolution early as unwilling participants and remain involved through to the end.
Director: Hugh Hudson | Stars: Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, Joan Plowright
Votes: 7,558 | Gross: $0.36M
25. The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985 TV Movie)
95 min | Action, War
During WW2, American General Worden orders Major Reisman to pick 12 soldiers from the military prison for the dangerous mission of killing a Nazi General.
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen | Stars: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Ken Wahl, Larry Wilcox
Votes: 2,606
26. Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986)
PG-13 | 98 min | Drama, Romance, War
A Protestant World War II pilot and a Jewish girl fall in love in Jerusalem, even though their diverse backgrounds threaten to pull them apart.
Director: Moshé Mizrahi | Stars: Tom Hanks, Cristina Marsillach, Benedict Taylor, Anat Atzmon
Votes: 2,749 | Gross: $0.28M
27. Heartbreak Ridge (1986)
R | 130 min | Drama, War
Hard-nosed, hard-living Marine Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway clashes with his superiors and his ex-wife as he takes command of a spoiled recon platoon with a bad attitude.
Director: Clint Eastwood | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Marsha Mason, Everett McGill, Moses Gunn
Votes: 48,230 | Gross: $42.72M
28. Platoon (1986)
R | 120 min | Drama, War
Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man in conflict.
Director: Oliver Stone | Stars: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Keith David
Votes: 439,764 | Gross: $138.53M
29. Empire of the Sun (1987)
PG | 153 min | Drama, War
A young English boy struggles to survive under Japanese occupation of China during World War II.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, Nigel Havers
Votes: 134,368 | Gross: $22.24M
30. Escape from Sobibor (1987 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 143 min | Drama, History, War
German death camp in Sobibor, Poland, killed two hundred fifty thousand Jews. It had the most successful prisoner escape in World War II on October 14, 1943.
Director: Jack Gold | Stars: Alan Arkin, Joanna Pacula, Rutger Hauer, Hartmut Becker
Votes: 9,832
31. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
R | 116 min | Drama, War
A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin
Votes: 790,871 | Gross: $46.36M
32. Gardens of Stone (1987)
R | 111 min | Drama, Romance, War
A Sergeant must deal with his desires to save the lives of young soldiers being sent to Viet Nam. Continuously denied the chance to teach the soldiers about his experiences, he settles for trying to help the son of an old Army buddy.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: James Caan, Anjelica Huston, James Earl Jones, D.B. Sweeney
Votes: 6,141 | Gross: $5.26M
33. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
R | 121 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
In 1965, an unorthodox and irreverent DJ named Adrian Cronauer begins to shake up things when he is assigned to the U.S. Armed Services radio station in Vietnam.
Director: Barry Levinson | Stars: Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Tom T. Tran, Chintara Sukapatana
Votes: 153,919 | Gross: $123.92M
34. Hamburger Hill (1987)
R | 110 min | Action, Drama, Thriller
A very realistic interpretation of one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.
Director: John Irvin | Stars: Anthony Barrile, Michael Boatman, Don Cheadle, Michael Dolan
Votes: 27,966 | Gross: $13.84M
35. Hope and Glory (1987)
PG-13 | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Bill, a young boy living on the outskirts of London experiences the exhilaration of World War II. During this period, Bill learns about sex, death, love, hypocrisy, and the faults of adults as he prowls the ruins of bombed houses.
Director: John Boorman | Stars: Sarah Miles, David Hayman, Sebastian Rice-Edwards, Geraldine Muir
Votes: 14,608 | Gross: $10.02M
36. The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987 TV Movie)
TV-PG | 90 min | Action, War
During WW2, American General Worden orders Major Wright to pick 12 condemned soldiers from the brig and parachute into occupied France where they must destroy a Nazi nerve gas facility and extricate the foreign scientists working there.
Director: Lee H. Katzin | Stars: Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine, Vince Edwards, Bo Svenson
Votes: 1,227
37. The Hanoi Hilton (1987)
R | 125 min | Drama, War
Follows the suffering, torture, and brutal treatment that American prisoners of war had to deal with on a daily basis while in North Vietnam's Hoa Lo prison.
Director: Lionel Chetwynd | Stars: Michael Moriarty, Paul Le Mat, John Edwin Shaw, Ken Wright
Votes: 1,211 | Gross: $0.76M
38. The Lighthorsemen (1987)
PG | 131 min | Drama, History, War
In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestine they rely on the Australian light horse regiment to break the deadlock.
Director: Simon Wincer | Stars: Peter Phelps, Nick Waters, John Larking, Jack Heywood
Votes: 2,025
39. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Not Rated | 89 min | Animation, Drama, War
A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.
Director: Isao Takahata | Stars: Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Akemi Yamaguchi, Yoshiko Shinohara
Votes: 310,753
40. Man Behind the Sun (1988)
Not Rated | 105 min | Drama, History, Horror
Japanese troops round up Chinese and Russian prisoners of war and take them to unit 731, where they're horribly tortured and experimented on to test new biological weapons.
Director: Tun-Fei Mou | Stars: Gang Wang, Dai Yao Wu, Runshen Wang, Zhe Quan
Votes: 7,287
41. Platoon Leader (1988)
R | 97 min | Drama, War
A young officer, just out of West Point is sent to Vietnam, where the men don't respect him until he gets wounded and returns to be a wiser soldier and a better commander
Director: Aaron Norris | Stars: Tony Pierce, Robert F. Lyons, Michael Dudikoff, Michael DeLorenzo
Votes: 2,147 | Gross: $1.35M
42. The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988 TV Movie)
Not Rated | 100 min | Action, Adventure, War
A team of renegade soldiers in World War II tries to stop the creation of the Fourth Reich in the Middle East.
Director: Lee H. Katzin | Stars: Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine, Hunt Block, Matthew Burton
Votes: 1,326
43. 84C MoPic (1989)
R | 95 min | Drama, War
The title refers to the U.S. Army's former "MOS" (job code) for a combat cameraman. The story follows a unit of American G.I.s in Vietnam, all with different backgrounds and motives for being there, through the lens of his camera.
Director: Patrick Sheane Duncan | Stars: Jonathan Emerson, Nicholas Cascone, Jason Tomlins, Christopher Burgard
Votes: 1,939 | Gross: $0.15M
44. Casualties of War (1989)
R | 113 min | Action, Crime, Drama
During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager.
Director: Brian De Palma | Stars: Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, Don Harvey, John C. Reilly
Votes: 48,151 | Gross: $18.67M
45. Farewell to the King (1989)
PG-13 | 117 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
Borneo, 1942: An American soldier escapes WWII and becomes the king of the headhunters in the jungle. Two British soldiers are parachuted into the area to find local support for the battle against the Japanese.
Director: John Milius | Stars: Nick Nolte, Nigel Havers, Frank McRae, Gerry Lopez
Votes: 3,134 | Gross: $2.42M
46. The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1988)
R | 97 min | Action, Drama, War
A tough U.S. sergeant and his sidekick roll into a demoralized firebase, where they attempt to rebuild morale and fortifications amid a climactic battle with the Viet Cong.
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith | Stars: Wings Hauser, R. Lee Ermey, Robert Arevalo, Mark Neely
Votes: 3,341
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