Since their respective conceptions in the 1990s, there has always been a debate around IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes and their reputability. Which website is the most reliable when it comes to delivering accurate ratings on movies? While Rotten Tomatoes is renowned for relying on critical input from respected voices from the world of the film critic, and is arguably seen as the more discerning site, IMDb offers a wider, more diverse view on movies with the perspective of the “common man,” which is why it makes the website the most popular among the average filmgoer.

As one of the most watched genres, there has never been a shortage of superb war movies. Based on films with more than 20,000 audience ratings and an aggregated user score, here are some of the highest-rated war movies on IMDb…

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

6 Braveheart

     Paramount Pictures

Mel Gibson directed and starred in 1995’s English-hating epic Braveheart. In this full-blooded, battle-hardened 3-hour-long dramatization of legendary Scotsman, William Wallace’s life as a revolutionary and Scottish war hero, who led an army against King Edward I of England. The film was lapped up willingly by the Academy, with Braveheart winning an impressive five Oscars at the 1996 awards.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Braveheart has been widely criticized as anti-English propaganda, and upon closer inspection by academics, it is arguably one of the most historically inaccurate movies ever made. Even if the battle scenes are pretty spectacular, with a cheesy script and a clear agenda, its 8.4 IMDb rating is startlingly high all things considered.

5 Apocalypse Now

     United Artists

Director Francis Ford Coppola followed up his two Godfather films with the trippy, atmospheric Vietnam War masterpiece Apocalypse Now. The 1979 film ascends from the hazy red mist of the vast jungles and Viet Cong-infested waterways of Cambodia as US army officer Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is entrusted with tracking down and assassinating Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando).

Kurtz was a leader of the US army’s special forces, but has now purportedly gone mad and is waging a guerrilla war against Vietnamese forces. The film was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness, and is a horrifically poignant reminder of the extreme barbarity of those that have an inherent sense of entitlement that they are the superior people.

4 Casablanca

     Warner Bros.

Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca turned 80 years old last year, and the love for the timeless classic has only grown with age. The film stars Hollywood great Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, an American ex-pat living in Morocco’s Casablanca.

Rick decides to help his friend and former lover, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), and her husband Victor (Paul Henreid), a Czech resistance fighter, flee the Nazi regime. The 1942 romantic drama is a story of redemption, and of the rekindling of lost love. This piece of artistic black-and-white filmmaking rightly has its name firmly cemented as an irrefutable part of Hollywood movie legacy.

3 The Pianist

     Pathé

Roman Polanski’s Academy Award-winning title The Pianist turned 20 years old in 2022, and after two decades, its 8.5 rating from just shy of a million votes is a pretty sensational rating, and certainly reflective of the film’s incredibly moving sentiments. Adapted from the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew during World Wwar II, the film chronicles his life as a celebrated pianist who quickly finds himself and his family in grave jeopardy at the hands of the anti-Semitic, Nazi occupation in Poland.

Confined to the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, Szpilman fights for his and his family’s lives in this harrowing depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust, and the devastation and desolation it caused so many. A sobering picture that delves into the perils of the Nazi regime, The Pianist is a haunting study of one man’s unwavering determination to stay alive.

2 Saving Private Ryan

     DreamWorks Distribution

The 1990s were a decorated decade for Steven Spielberg with Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, with the director’s films winning a staggering 15 Academy Awards combined, including two triumphs as Best Director. With 1.4 million ratings on IMDb, Saving Private Ryan sits at a formidable 8.6.

Set against the backdrop of World War II, the all-action epic follows Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and his company on a mission to locate and bring home Private Ryan after his three brothers all perish in battle. Spielberg’s classic is the standard-bearer for the all-American, patriotic war film. In spite of the typical, and perhaps largely predictable Hollywood ending, this is a movie of truly breathtaking cinematic accomplishment, a brilliantly immersive, uncompromising piece of filmmaking that incorporates the blood, guts, and inhumanity of war.

1 Schindler’s List

     Amblin Entertainment 

Based on Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark, the 1993 screen adaptation, Schindler’s List sits atop IMDb’s prestigious list of highest-rated war films of all time, and sixth on the rating site’s acclaimed Top 250. Another definitive Spielberg wartime classic, the ’90s war movie, in all its monochromatic ambiance, tells the true and awe-inspiring tale of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson).

Schindler was a German factory owner, industrialist, and Nazi party member who used his power as a significant munitions’ exporter to the German Army in order to shelter and protect his Jewish workers from the Nazi gas chambers. Ralph Fiennes plays one of the most evil characters in film, Amon Goeth, a prominent Nazi officer and notorious SS official who is the film’s main antagonist.