20 best movies like Johnny Mad Dog (2008)

Debra Winger, Oris Erhuero and Idris Elba star in this drama framed by the Rwandan genocide.

Two westerners, a priest and a teacher find themselves in the middle of the Rwandan genocide and face a moral dilemna. Do they place themselves in danger and protect the refugees, or escape the country with their lives? Based on a true story.

A nameless woman keeps a diary as the Russians invade Berlin in the spring of 1945. She is in her early 30s, a patriotic journalist with international credentials; her husband, Gerd, a writer, is an officer at the Russian front. She speaks Russian and, for a day or two after the invasion, keeps herself safe, but then the rapes begin. She resolves to control her fate

This harrowing tale of survival centers on Rose, a Masurian woman, whose German soldier husband was killed in the war, leaving her alone on their farm. A single woman had no defense against Russian soldiers who raped as a form of revenge, nor against plundering Poles who found themselves in desperate straits. Help arrives for Rose in the form of Tadeusz, a former officer in the Polish Home Army who deserted after he saw his wife raped and murdered by Russian troops and is attempting to hide his identity.

A drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country. Follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in a fictional West African country. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination Depicts the mechanics of war and does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail, and paints a complex, difficult picture of Agu as a child soldier.

Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are street kids. The daily dose of glue sniffing represents their only escape from reality. Since they left Dib and his gang, they have been living on the portside of Casablanca. They live in constant fear of Dib's revenge. Ali wants to become a sailor - when he was living with his mother, a prostitute, he used to listen to a fairy tale about the sailor who discovered the miracle island with two suns. Instead of finding his island in the dream, Ali and his friends are confronted with Dib's gang. Matters are getting serious.

Naples, year 1943, in the middle of World War II. The city has just be liberated by American troops in an era in which nobody knows just when the war or where begins the peace; winners and losers face...

A tense drama that revolves around a platoon of Spanish soldiers, following the innocent young men as they step from the training field into a hell for which nothing could have prepared them.

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

A private security contractor in Iraq rejects the official explanation of his friend's death and decides to investigate.

Beirut, 1982: a young Palestinian refugee and an Israeli fighter pilot form a tentative bond in their attempt to make their way across war-torn Lebanon back to their home.

A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.

A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership.

The movie encompasses several different elements-the perils of war, a touch of macabre, sadness and redemption.

A group of German boys are ordered to protect a small bridge in their home village during the waning months of the second world war. Truckloads of defeated, cynical Wehrmacht soldiers flee the approaching American troops, but the boys, full of enthusiasm for the "blood and honor" Nazi ideology, stay to defend the useless bridge.

Poetic journey through the shards and shadows of one boy's war-ravaged youth.

Based on the story about Guy Gabaldon, a Los Angeles Hispanic boy raised in the 1930s by a Japanese-American foster family. After Pearl Harbor, his foster family is interned at the Manzanar camp for Japanese Americans, while he enlists in the Marines, where his ability to speak Japanese becomes a vital asset. During the Battle of Saipan, he convinces 800 Japanese to surrender after their general commits suicide.

Disheartened by futile combat, appalled by the corruption of their South Vietnamese ally, and constantly endangered by the incompetence of their own company commander, the young men find a possible way out of the war. They are told that if they purposely lose a soccer game against a South Vietnamese team, they can spend the rest of their tour playing exhibition games behind the lines.

In a war ridden country a woman watches over the husband reduced to a vegetable state by a bullet in the neck, abandoned by Jihad companions and brothers. One day, the woman decides to say things to him she could never have done before.

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia

After their father dies, a family of five are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq. Matters are made worse when 12 year old Ayoub, the new head of the family, is told that his handicapped brother, Madi, needs an immediate operation in order to remain alive. This heartbreaking tale shows the lengths to which a family will go in order to survive in the harshest of conditions, where even the horses are fed liquor in order to work.

Alain Lefevre is a boxer paid by a Marseille mobster to take a dive. When he wins the fight he attempts to flee to America with the mobster's girlfriend Katrina. This plan fails and he seeks escape by joining the foreign legion. As part of the legion he tangles with abusive lieutenant Steinkampf and bonds with legionnaires Luther, Mackintosh and Rosetti.

Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.

A chronicle of the Cristeros War (1926-1929), which was touched off by a rebellion against the Mexican government's attempt to secularize the country.

19-year-old Billy Lynn is brought home for a victory tour after a harrowing Iraq battle. Through flashbacks the film shows what really happened to his squad - contrasting the realities of war with America's perceptions.

During the bloody war in Chechnya, a British couple and two Russian soldiers are taken hostage by Chechen rebels. Two of the hostages are then released to bring the money for the British woman who is forced to wait for the ransom.

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.

During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who's now a captive in his camp he oversees. Their once promising connection has become ambiguous as their motives have changed.

Four Navy SEALs on a covert mission to neutralize a high-level al-Qaeda operative must make an impossible moral decision in the mountains of Afghanistan that leads them into an enemy ambush. As they confront unthinkable odds, the SEALs must find reserves of strength and resilience to fight to the finish.

Britain, A.D. 117. Quintus Dias, the sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, marches north with General Virilus' legendary Ninth Legion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the Earth and destroy their leader, Gorlacon.

When a young woman is cruelly and indiscriminately attacked by a notorious gang led by the violent Trey, her little 16 year old sister Kayla wants revenge and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means joining a rival girl gang led by the volatile and damaged man-hating Danielle.

The final film in Rossellini's war film trilogy (the first two being Rome, Open City and Paisà). Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and post-war Italy, respectively. The story follows a twelve-year-old boy, Edmund Kohler, who is mainly left to his own devices in order to survive and to help his family do the same.

The last days of World War I, Eastern front. Captain Conan, a lone wolf, a true warrior, leads a band of ruthless French fighters who love hand-to-hand combat; they are not fit for peacetime, they only feel really alive in the chaos of the battlefield.

A civil war broke out in the 1950s between North and South Korea which changed the country forever. 71: Into the Fire centers on the struggles of 71 student soldiers who fought through the Korean War. Using real people and events based on the opening moves of the Battle of P'ohang-dong, the film exposes the personal and physical conflicts that these students faced when finding themselves on the last line of defense at P'ohang-dong Girl's Middle School against the NKPA's advancement, needing to hold out until back up from other Korean troops and the Allies arrived.

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.

Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.

It is late spring of 1942, and the Great Patriotic War is in full swing. A long way off from the front-line, at some God-forgotten junction, the Germans make an air landing operation in an attempt to get through to the Kirov railway and the White Sea - the Baltic Sea Canal. These aren't just ordinary paratroopers. This is a team of seasoned and highly trained infiltrators, the elite of the Waffen-SS, superhumans. The only thing in their way is an anti-aircraft artillery unit of corporal Vaskov and five young women in training. It may seem like a fight of local significance, but the countrys main strategic transportation artery is at stake. Can the corporal and his 'petite newbies' prevent Nazi sabotage and at what cost?

Drama set in 1942, during one of the most important battles of World War II, which stopped the progress of Nazi forces and turned the tide of war in favor of the Allies. The Soviet army mounts a counter-attack on the Nazi forces that occupy half of Stalingrad on the other side of the Volga, but the operation to cross the river is unsuccessful. A few soldiers who managed to get to the other side take refuge in a house on the bank of Volga. Here they find a girl who didn’t escape when the Germans came. While the whole might of the German army descends onto them, the heroes of Stalingrad experience love, loss, joy and the sense of ultimate freedom that can only be felt by those about to die. They defend the house at all costs while the Red Army prepares for another attack.

During the First Lebanon War in 1982, a lone tank and a paratroopers platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town.

When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942 the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. This was a POW detention center like no other. There were no walls or barbed-wire fences for the simple reason that there was no place for the prisoners to escape to. Included among the prisoners is the American Cpl. King, a wheeler dealer who has managed to established a pretty good life for himself in the camp. While most of the prisoners are near starvation and have uniforms that are in tatters, King eats well and and has crisp clean clothes to wear every day. His nemesis is Lt. Robin Grey, the camp Provost who attempts to keep good order and discipline. He knows that King is breaking camp rules by bartering with the Japanese but can't quite get the evidence he needs to stop him. King soon forms a friendship with Lt. Peter Marlowe an upper class British officer who is fascinated with King's élan and no rules approach to life...

The film is based on the eponymous book by Emmanuil Kazakevich. In the summer of 1944 the Nazi Armies prepare a massive Tank Division named 'Viking" for the offensive on occupied Russian land. The Russian Army's special group of seven snipers named "Zvezda" is sent for a reconnaissance operation behind the enemy lines in the back of the Nazi Tank Division. Two previous Russian groups never came back. The seven Russians know that they are going to an almost certain Death for the sake of Victory.

Three British soldiers find themselves stranded in No Man's Land after a failed charge on the German Trenches. Set in France 1916.

During the war in Afghanistan a Soviet tank crew commanded by a tyrannical officer find themselves lost and in a struggle against a band of Mujahadeen guerrillas in the mountains.

Alejandra and her dad Roberto have just moved to town. She is new at school, he has a new job. Starting over is sometimes complicated when you have left so much behind.

During the Boer War, three Australian lieutenants are on trial for shooting Boer prisoners. Though they acted under orders, they are being used as scapegoats by the General Staff, who hopes to distance themselves from the irregular practices of the war. The trial does not progress as smoothly as expected by the General Staff, as the defence puts up a strong fight in the courtroom.

Sergeant Joe Gunn and his tank crew pick up five British soldiers, a Frenchman and a Sudanese man with an Italian prisoner crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their command after the fall of Tobruk. Tambul, the Sudanese leads them to an abandoned desert fortress where they hope to find water. Soon a detachment of German soldiers arrives and attempts to barter food for water, but Gunn and his followers refuse. When the Germans attack, Gunn leads his desert-weary men in a desperate battle, hoping that British reinforcements can arrive in time.

During World War II in the freezing winter of 1944-45 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.

In 1944, in the Belgian - German border, seven German soldiers survive an American attack in the front and lock themselves in a bunker to protect the position. Under siege by the enemy and with little ammunition, they decide to explore underground tunnels to seek supplies and find an escape route. While in the tunnel, weird things happen with the group.