The Top 5 Must See Movies About D-Day Ranked

• 5. The Big Red One (1980)

  The Big Red One is almost like an updated and expanded version of Breakthrough, as it traces five men from their first campaigns in North Africa through Italy, D-Day, and, finally into Germany. The film engages with WWII with greater complexity than most of its peers. From soldiers struggling with the requirement to kill enemies to the difficulty of comprehending what happened in the Holocaust, this is a film that combines dramatic action with hard-hitting philosophical questions. Plus, it may be Mark Hamill’s best role since Luke Skywalker.

• 4. The Longest Day (1962)

  This is one film that focuses exclusively on D-Day as a central theme. With a runtime of almost 3 hours, it’s no slouch and tries to tell the story from multiple perspectives, including numerous Allied and German soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict. The cast is huge and full of the biggest names of the time, including John Wayne, Sean Connery, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, and Roddy McDowell. Even if the human drama sometimes gets lost in the sheer scale of the movie, it still encapsulates the events of D-Day in superb fashion. This is one of the movies that you will probably see running often on various cable channels that play older movies.

• 3. Where Eagles Dare (1968)

  Long before Clint Eastwood became one of Hollywood’s best directors, he played Lt. Schaffer, an American Ranger thrown into a British operation to rescue General George Carnaby from the S.S., before he can divulge the secret plans regarding D-Day. However, not everything is at it seems. It soon becomes obvious that there’s another objective separate from the official one. The film scored well with critics and audiences alike thanks to solid performances by the star-studded cast of Where Eagles Dare including Eastwood and Richard Burton,  The movie’s biggest strength is its plot twist, which is surprisingly effective and too good to spoil.

• 2. Patton (1970)

  Of course, Patton focuses on more than just the Normandy invasion. In many ways, this movie does the best job of tying together the entire European campaign, particularly because of the focus on General George S. Patton. Actor George C. Scott plays the iconic figure with such endearing earnestness that it’s hard not to sympathize with his actions. D-Day occupies a position of honor in this film, but like other battles, the emphasis is not so much on the fighting, as it is on the meaning. Why does Patton fight, and how does he examine the cost of every single action he makes? Those are the tough questions the film tries to answer. Scott’s performance won him a well deserved Oscar.

• 1. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

  Saving Private Ryan boasts the most realistic and authentic depiction of D-Day ever committed to film, and it isn’t close. Using the full arsenal of his experience with special effects and action sequences, Steven Spielberg gave audiences a ground-level perspective on the D-Day landings, before using it as a jumping-off point for its main plot. It remains one of the biggest and most intense WWII battles in movie history. The sheer brutality of the D-Day landing sequence is a powerful and harrowing experience, but one that has been lauded as a truthful representation of the horrors that went on that day, as opposed to Hollywood’s typical glamorization of war. All this helped to make Saving Private Ryan the best war movie ever made in the eyes of many people.

  This also happens to be not only happens to be a great movie about D-Day, it’s also in my opinion the best movie about World War 2 ever made. I think I will watch it today as a matter of fact.