Set during the Battle of the Bulge, this movie follows a platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. The scriptwriter, Robert Pirosh, was himself a soldier fighting in the depicted battle, and the movie is based on his own experience. It doesn’t glorify war, and the characters behave very realistically (or so I would imagine, seeing how I wasn’t really present).

There is a specific fighting scene in this movie that has to be the most authentic action sequence I’ve ever seen. There’s no yelling out commands or heroic scenes, some of the soldiers consider running away while others do their best to stay alive. I was stunned when I first saw this movie, it seems to be rather overlooked today, even though it won two Oscars. The characters are brilliant and the acting is the same, and you can tell that the story is written by someone who actually fought in the battle. The soldiers talk about their fears and some of them are trying their best to leave the front lines.