War Movies Blog

There were many war movies showing Allied prisoners of war trying to escape through tunnels from German POW camps during the war, but there were very few showing what it looked like in opposite situation. The McKenzie Break is one of those very few examples - German officers are trying to escape from camp located in Scotland, and no, they do not try to escape through tunnel.

Soviet invasion on Afghanistan in 1980s was first, but unfortunately not last, modern war that took place in that country and it was a warning for any future plans for the aggressors that the mountainous Afghanistan is one of the worst places to invade unprepared. Soviet army put their best weapons for that operation - tanks, airplanes, armoured transporters, assault helicopters - while their opponents had only simple firearms. But the hard conditions in the mountains of Afghanistan proved that the mujahideen fighters were not that defenceless as it might have look like.

Wake Island was one of (if not the only) war movie in history that was filmed when the events depicted were still going on - first scenes were shot in California while Japanese were still bombarding Wake Island.

Japanese war movies were rarely glorifying the war itself, rather concentrated on human aspect of the war, but of course the exceptions were those movies that were based not on the historical events, but rather on fiction. Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean was based on the popular novel that incorporated a manga-like style and sci-fi storyline.

Dolph Lundgren is a household name for many reasons, but certainly not for making great movies - just like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal or Michael Dudikoff he became one of the icons of genre that can be described as on a verge between action flick and martial arts movies. While most of such productions went straight-to-video some were on decent level and Red Scorpion is one of the exceptions.

In 1942 Nazi Germany was in a difficult position - while western front hasn’t yet started they had to guard the English Channel, on the eastern front Russians were raising in power, in North Africa the Afrika Korps was struggling to get the upper hand and the resistance forces in Poland, France, Yugoslavia and other countries were putting a lot of strain on Wehrmacht. The last thing they needed is another problem, like dealing with the escapes of Allied officers from POW camps. But in 1942 they came up with interesting plan to solve that particular problem.

Ian Fleming, later famous as creator of James Bond character and author of novel about Agent 007, during World War 2 took part in operation that was perhaps not as exciting as the adventures of the character he created, but still of equally great importance to the world. Fleming was organizing No. 30 Commando unit, later renamed into 30 Assault Unit, a commandos group that operated in Europe as part of British intelligence - from collecting pieces of information to capturing enemy bases at the end of the war. Age of Heroes tells the story of one of the operations of No. 30 Commando.

The problem with modern American war movies is that either they were made as adventure flicks that had very little to do with reality or they try too hard to be important, to be accurate, to be patriotic and tell the true story from war times. Flags of Our Fathers is unfortunately the shining example of trying too hard.

Since the success of Band of Brothers Americans were trying to find a true World War 2 story that could be equal to this amazing mini-series. First there was Pacific mini-series based on similar idea, but failed to gain much recognition, later there was Unbroken that was far from being even remotely interesting, British The Railway Man was similarly hard to be called a great success. Hacksaw Ridge was based on amazing World War 2 story and... failed even worse.

In 1970s Poland was still in the Warsaw Pact, the zone of Soviet influence, which was in a way form of occupation (Soviet army was present in all the countries of Warsaw Pact). This situation combined with repression towards the citizens lead to the birth of Solidarnosc (Solidarity), which in 1981 changed the face of Eastern Europe, and later the whole world.