In honor of Memorial Day and to all our members of the Armed Forces past and present, this week’s War Movie Monday pick is the MGM World War II classic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) which depicts the exploits of the Doolittle Raiders who bombed Japan just four months after Pearl Harbor. The film stars Van Johnson (Lieutenant Ted Lawson), Robert Walker (Corporal David Thatcher), Robert Mitchum (Lt. Bob Gray) and Spencer Tracy as Lt. Col. James Doolittle.

The film opens in February 1942 just two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States and its allies have met a series of crushing defeats against the Japanese in Malaya, Indo China, and the Philippines. The Japanese blitzkrieg across the Far East seems almost impossible to stop.

Samuel Fuller’s The Steel Helmet (1951) is one of the most honest, unflinching, in your face war films ever made. Set during the opening stages of the Korean War, the film follows a small squad of Americans who face off against an unseen enemy. Gene Evans makes his big screen debut as Sergeant Zack, a World War II veteran who finds himself in a new kind of war.

The film opens with a tight close-up shot of a steel helmet that has been punctured by a bullet. It’s shortly revealed to be Sgt. Zack who is the lone survivor of an enemy attack that has massacred his outfit. With his hands bound behind his back, Zack tries to free himself. A young South Korean boy (William Chun) comes to Zack’s aid and frees him. The boy is nicknamed “Short Round” by Zack who allows the kid to tag along with him until he can find another American outfit to join up with.

As Zack and Short Round are making their way through a wooded area Zack hears a noise and tells Short Round to “Eat rice”. They’ve come across another American, a medic who is also a survivor from an enemy attack. Corporal Thompson (James Edwards) joins up with Zack and Short Round. It is also revealed that Thompson is a World War II vet and his experiences during the last war mirror that of Fuller’s own combat diaries with the First Infantry Division.

Shortly after, Zack and the others encounter an American patrol led by the green, inexperienced Lt. Driscoll (Steve Brodie) who commands the quintessential, stereotypical squad from most war films. Fuller handpicked most of the actors that represented the different types of service men who were serving in Korea.

Albeit a Sci-Fi classic, The War of the Worlds (1953) is a multi genre film. Based on H.G. Well’s classic novel about a Martian invasion of Earth, the film represents America’s fear of Bolshevik communism in the 1950s. The film opens with a narration sequence which tells the audience why the Martians began looking across the vast sea of space looking for a new world in order to colonize. Of all the planets that were examined by the Martians, Earth was the only suitable planet for their needs.

Screenwriter Barre Lyndon substitutes Well’s England for southern California where the opening stages of the invasion begin. Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) is a scientist who is called in to examine a meteorite that has made an unusual landing in the hills outside a small town. At the crash site, he meets a young woman who is familiar with his work. Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) and her pastor uncle invite Dr. Forester to stay with them for the time being while the meteorite cools off and can be examined.

Keeping an eye on the meteorite and insuring that it doesn’t start any more fires, three men discover that the meteorite is in fact a Martian ship that emerges from the crash site. The three men are quickly vaporized from the heat ray of the Martian war machine.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is one of the greatest films ever made and a tie for my number one favorite film alongside Dr. Strangelove (1964). It is one of director David Lean’s most lasting legacies in Hollywood and a truly epic one-of-a-kind film. It was a film that was the inspiration to future filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese, and George Lucas.

I first saw the film at the age of twelve when my father took me to the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City in 1989 for the film’s restored re-release. My father told me that it was his most favorite film and that I was very privileged to see it on the big screen. I will never forget when the lights dimmed and Maurice Jarre’s score played before the opening credits of the film. It was the first film that I can remember where my eyes were completely fixed to the screen in fear that if I turned away for a spilt second that I might miss a pivotal moment.

As I began rummaging through the popcorn bag, I looked over to my father who smiled and gave me a wink. My experience seeing the film on the big screen was like for so many others, a film, which made me want to become a director and it solidified my love of cinema from that moment forward.

This week’s War Movie Monday pick is Universal Picture’s first ever Academy Award winning film for Best Picture and for Best Director (Lewis Milestone), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The film stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Ben Alexander, and Slim Summerville.

All Quiet on the Western Front has been hailed as the greatest anti-war film of all time. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name, the film follows a group of young men who witness the horrors of World War I after being convinced by their schoolmaster that duty to one’s country and to shed blood in defense of the fatherland is a noble deed.

The small group of young men quickly gets their first dose of military life after they endure basic training at the hands of their drill instructor Himmelstoss (Wray) who is the World War I equivalent of what R. Lee Ermey was for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. After just only a few short weeks of basic training, the young men are sent off to the front and are plunged head first into combat.

This week’s pick is the Vietnam MIA rescue film Uncommon Valor (1983) directed by Ted Kotcheff (Rambo: First Blood). It stars Gene Hackman, Fred Ward, Patrick Swayze, Reb Brown, Tim Thomerson, Robert Stack and Randall “Tex” Cobb.

Uncommon Valor touches on the subject of American servicemen who had been designated POW/MIA since the end of American involvement in The Vietnam War. Gene Hackman stars as Col. Jason Rhodes, a retired Marine and Korean War veteran who believes his son has been a POW for over ten years in a Laos prison camp.

Rhodes has spent years combing Southeast Asia finding clues that lead him to believe Frank is still alive. Rhodes even enlists the help of the U.S. State Department who offer little or no help.

This week’s pick is the classic 1982 Ted Kotcheff war/thriller First Blood a.k.a Rambo: First Blood (1982), the first installment in the legendary Rambo series. The film stars Sylvester Stallone (John Rambo), Brian Dennehy (Sheriff Will Teasle), and Richard Crenna (Col. Sam Trautman).

First Blood was based on David Morrell’s 1972 classic novel about a Vietnam veteran trying to adapt to civilian life after his horrific experiences during the war as a member of an elite special forces unit. Kotcheff’s film serves as a study into the psyche of veterans and shows the audience the harsh realities that were still facing many vets by the turn of the 1980s.

Stallone stars as John Rambo, a man haunted by his past who is back packing through the Pacific northwest of the United States in search of an old Army buddy, Delmare Berry. Rambo arrives at his friend’s home to discover that he had been dead for over a year due to cancer as a result of Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the U.S. military in Vietnam to spot the enemy from the air (this was an issue that was just now becoming known to the public). Realizing he is the last surviving member of his unit, Rambo once again hits the open road and wanders into the town of Hope, Washington.

This week’s pick is the HBO film By Dawn’s Early Light (1990), directed by Jack Sholder. The film stars Martin Landau, Powers Boothe, Rebecca De Mornay, James Earl Jones, Darren McGavin, Rip Torn, Jeffery DeMunn, Peter MacNicol, and Nicolas Coster.

By Dawn’s Early Light was based on the novel Trinity’s Child that depicts a full nuclear exchange between the U.S. and USSR. The film is set in 1991 as the Soviet Union is undergoing radical political change (when the film was produced, the Soviet Union was in fact beginning to collapse).

A group of Soviet brass launches a nuclear strike with a stolen missile against the Soviet city of Donetsk. U.S. forces track the trajectory of the missile from allied Turkey. This act makes the Soviet Première and Soviet forces think it was a surprise attack from the U.S. and NATO forces.  The Soviets launch a retaliatory strike which threatens U.S. land based bombers and many key points of communication such as the NORAD facility, SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, Washington D.C., and Andrews AFB in Maryland which is where the president would be evacuated from.

This week’s pick is the John McTiernan thriller The Hunt for Red October (1990). Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, and James Earl Jones star in this Cold War classic about a Soviet naval commander and a new invincible Soviet sub which threatens peace between the two super powers.

Set in early 1984 before Gorbachev came to power as the new Soviet premier, the new ballistic missile submarine Red October sets sail from port in the arctic and makes its way to the north Atlantic for a training exercise. Its captain, Marko Ramius (Connery) selects his officers and the crew for a daring mission that they believe will test the might of their old adversary, The United States navy.

The Red October is equipped with a new type of propulsion system, a caterpillar drive, which renders the sub virtually silent to sonar. This feature and its nuclear payload, represent a clear and present danger to U.S. policy in the north Atlantic at the height of Cold War tensions between both the U.S and Soviet Union.

This week’s pick is the post Cold War thriller Crimson Tide which stars Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman as U.S. Submariners who clash over their orders to launch nuclear weapons in this Tony Scott action classic. Crimson Tide begins during a period of political unrest in post Soviet Russia when military forces crush a rebellion in neighboring Chechnya.

Violence begins to spread throughout other republics and ultra nationalists headed by a man named Radchenko criticizes American, British, and French involvement which cuts off aid to Russia as a protest of its hostilities towards its neighboring country. Radchenko’s forces seize a Russian ICBM missile complex and threaten to launch nuclear weapons if either the U.S. or its allies move in to stop him.

After several years of peace, the Cold War begins to heat up once again.