List of the best World War 2 movies to stream on Netflix right now (May 2018)

Brad Pitt stars in Fury following a
WW2 Sherman crew

World War Two what a great topic for a war movie, I was really excited to go through the Netflix catalogue and see what great WW2 films there were only, there's not that many sadly. I had thought about doing a top 10 or a top 20 or something of the sort but alas, I only seem to find 7 and actually most of them I haven't (yet) watched. No use complaining I guess, what can Netflix UK offer? well of the 7 there certainly is some variety, they aren't all Hollywood blockbusters, there's a Russian production and an Indian one. The earliest two date from war time and the latest are barely a couple of years since release. There's some big name actors and some you've probably never heard of. It's a fairly good if short selection of war genre cinema to enjoy. I'm going to rank the films into some sort of order, like I said I haven't seen them all, where I have I'll add in some of my own comments and opinions, other than that find out below the film title, the main actors in the production, the director it's screen time and age rating. 



Hacksaw Ridge

One of the most influential war movies of recent times. Nominated for various awards. The premise is perhaps a little unusual a war film, the lead part being about a pacifist war hero. Nevertheless bravery and courage are familiar themes and despite the morals of the story this is a bona fide action filled war film. I've included the YouTube trailer below, for a good glimpse at this epic movie. 

Year of production: 2016, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 19m. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey and Teresa Palmer. Director: Mel Gibson.



Fury

I must admit I approached this film with a little scepticism, I'm not Brad Pitt's biggest fan anyway and I was never taken by Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. However I was very pleasantly surprised the movie is more on the sort of action scale of things and less gritty, but this is far from a cheesy action movie and is a very good war film. It follows the crew of a Sherman M4A2 (76) nicknamed Fury, during warfare in Germany in 1945. 

Year of production: 2014, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 14m. Starring: David Ayer, Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf. Director: David Ayer.

Stalingrad
2013, 15, 2h 10m. During the epic World War 2 battle for Stalingrad a group of Red Army soldiers holes up in a house. Starring: Pyotr Fyodorov, Dmitriy Lysenkov, Alexey Barabash and Andrey Smolyakov. Director: Fedor Bondarchuk.
(not to be confused with the 1993 film of the same name.)

The Fighting Seabees
1944, U, 1h 39m. Wartime movie about US construction battalions, known as Seabees. Despite their civilian status the workers soon find themselves armed and facing the Japanese enemy. Starring: John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Dennis O'Keefe as Lt. Cmdr. Robert Yarrow and William Frawley. Director: Edward Ludwig.

Pimpernel Smith
1941, U, 2h 1m. Posing as an Archaeologist, the protagonist secretly gets people out of wartime Nazi Germany. Starring: Leslie Howard, Francis L. Sullivan and Mary Morris. Director Leslie Howard.

Rangoon
2017, Guidance, 2h 32m. Female daredevil entertainer, goes from entertaining troops to involved in the action in this Indian production. Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut. Director: Vishal Bhardwaj.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage

I watched this recently because it's a war film that I hadn't seen, I can't say much else about attracted me to it. I think was for a good reason, there's some fairly good action scenes, the CGI is good but not a scratch on other Hollywood efforts and more recent video games. This sort of theme carries through all of it, the acting is in no way bad nor is it good and it's hard to have a real empathy for the characters and their plight. On the plus side, naval war films are something of a rarity and this is certainly a good attempt at addressing that balance. It's probably worth a watch, but I'd struggle to recommend it wholeheartedly. 

Year of production: 2016, age rating: 15, running time: 2h 10m. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Tom Sizemore, Thomas Jane and James Remar. Director: Mario Van Peebles.