20 best movies like Straight Into Darkness (2004)

In WWII Western Germany, Private David Manning reluctantly leaves behind a mortally wounded fellow soldier and searches for survivors from his platoon, only to learn from commanding officer Captain Pritchett that they have all been killed in action. Despite requesting a discharge on the grounds of mental disability, Manning is promoted to sergeant and assigned to lead a new platoon of young inductees.

During the Battle of the Bulge, an anachronistic count shelters a ragtag squad of Americans in his isolated castle hoping they will defend it against the advancing Germans.

In March of 1945, as the War in Europe is coming to a close, fighting erupts between German and American troops at the last remaining bridgehead across the Rhine.

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.

An American soldier who escapes the execution of his comrades by Japanese soldiers in Borneo during WWII becomes the leader of a personal empire among the headhunters in this war story told in the style of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The American is reluctant to rejoin the fight against the Japanese on the urging of a British commando team but conducts a war of vengeance when the Japanese attack his adopted people.

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.

Lieutenant Joe Rossi is 1st Officer on a Liberty Ship in a great convoy bound from Halifax to Murmansk. After German subs crushed the convoy his ship loses the convoy and is heading alone to Murmansk. In spite of attacks by German planes and subs he get the ship safely to Murmansk.

A WWII film set on a Pacific island. Japanese and allied forces occupy different parts of the island. When a group of British soldiers are sent on a mission behind enemy lines, things don't go exactly to plan. This film differs in that some of the 'heroes' are very reluctant, but they come good when they are pursued by the Japanese who are determined to prevent them returning to base.

Last months of World War II in April 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theater, a battle-hardened U.S. Army sergeant in the 2nd Armored Division named Wardaddy commands a Sherman tank called "Fury" and its five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

The film concentrates on the camaraderie and the divisions between the troops as they ready for the big offensive. Told in a taut narrative, the men of the 101st, led by Van Johnson, wait out the winter in the Ardennes forest to confront the German army in what would be the last major offensive of World War II. The men are demoralized and trapped, with no hope of support from the Allies.

Fact-based war drama about an American battalion of over 500 men which gets trapped behind enemy lines in the Argonne Forest in October 1918 France during the closing weeks of World War I.

Miracle at St. Anna chronicles the story of four American soldiers who are members of the all-black 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II.

In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent it, Hitler orders an all-out offensive to re-take French territory and capture the major port city of Antwerp.

At the end of World War II, a National Guard infantry company must set up artillery observation posts in a strategic area. Lt. Costa (Jack Palance) knows that Capt. Cooney (Eddie Albert) is in command only because of the "connections" he made stateside. Costa has serious doubts concerning Cooney's ability to lead, and when Cooney sends Costa and his men out on a dangerous mission -- and refuses to reenforce them -- all hell breaks loose.

Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.

In November 1941, Major Caton takes command of the small Marine garrison on Wake Island. His tendency toward spit and polish upsets the men's tropical lassitude, but Pearl Harbor changes everything. Soon the island is attacked and the Marines pull together day by day; but how long can they hold out?

Different factions in WWII-era Holland race to find a stash of Nazi gold.

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.

In the brutal trench fighting of the First World War, a British Infantry Company is separated from their regiment after a fierce battle. Attempting to return to their lines, the British soldiers discover what appears to be a bombed out German trench, abandoned except for a few dazed German soldiers. After killing most of the Germans, and taking one prisoner, the British company fortifies to hold the trench until reinforcements can arrive. Soon, however, strange things being to happen as a sense of evil descends on the trench and the British begin turn on each other.

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.

December 1942. Two young soldiers leave their posts at checkpoint 83 in North Värmland, Sweden and make their way through the ice cold winter night towards the Nazi-occupied Norwegian border. Sweden stands on the brink of invasion and they want to see the enemy everybody's talking about. But the adventure ends in disaster and soon thereafter Lieutenant Aron Stenström finds out that his brother Sven is one of the missing soldiers. With the odds stacked against him he is forced to go behind enemy lines on a secret rescue mission. Deep inside the Norwegian forests Aron realizes that a completely different kind of line must be crossed if they're to come out alive.

An American pilot impulsively joins His Majesty's Royal Air Force in Britain in an attempt to impress his ex-girlfriend.

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.

A British Corporal in France finds himself responsible for the lives of his men when their officer is killed. He has to get them back to Britain somehow. Meanwhile, British civilians are being dragged into the war with Operation Dynamo, the scheme to get the French and British forces back from the Dunkirk beaches. Some come forward to help, others were less willing.

Untold and lost history. A true story of the American Pathfinders, the volunteer paratroopers whose deadly mission was to land 30 minutes before the Normandy invasion, locate and mark strategic "drop zones" and set up the top-secret navigation equipment needed to guide the main airborne assault on D-Day.

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a young lieutenant leaves his expectant wife to volunteer for a secret bombing mission which will take the war to the Japanese homeland.

Tim Burstall directs then-up-and-comers Mel Gibson and Sam Neill in this action-packed Cannes Film Festival selection about the grim realities of World War II, a gritty drama based on actual events. Sent to rescue survivors from the site of a plane crash in the South Pacific, Capt. P.G. Kelly (Gibson) and his elite squad of Australian commandos must keep tabs on a defecting Japanese official who could hold the secret to peace.

A band of mercenaries led by Captain Curry travel through the Congo across deadly terrain, battling rival armies, to rescue $25 million in uncut diamonds.

After being freed from a Vietnamese war prison, French Lt. Col. Pierre Raspeguy is sent to help quell resistance forces in Algeria. With the help of the Capt. Esclavier, who has grown weary of war, and Capt. Boisfeuras, who lives for it, Raspeguy attempts to convert a rugged band of soldiers into a formidable fighting unit, with the promise of marrying a beautiful countess if he's made a general.

Mallory and Miller are back. The survivors of Navarone are sent on a mission along with a unit called Force 10, which is led by Colonel Barnsby. But Force 10 has a mission of their own which the boys know nothing about.

The "Memphis Belle" is a World War II bomber, piloted by a young crew on dangerous bombing raids into Europe. The crew only have to make one more bombing raid before they have finished their duty and can go home. In the briefing before their last flight, the crew discover that the target for the day is Dresden, a heavily-defended city that invariably causes many Allied casualties

Allied forces land at Anzio unopposed but instead of moving straight inland their commanding officer decides to dig in. A battle-hardened war correspondent borrows a jeep and drives to Rome and back without meeting any German forces, but his report on this absence of the enemy is discounted. By the time it is finally decided to make a move the Germans have arrived in strength and a prolonged ...

A rag tag unit of misfits known as the War Pigs must go behind enemy lines to exterminate Nazis by any means necessary.

Go Tell the Spartans is a 1978 American war film based on Daniel Ford's 1967 novel "Incident at Muc Wa." It tells the story about U.S. Army military advisers during the early part of the Vietnam War. Led my Major Asa Barker, these advisers and their South Vietnamese counterparts defend the village of Muc Wa against multiple attacks by Viet-Cong guerrillas.

In September 1942, the German Afrika Korps under Rommel have successfully pushed the Allies back into Egypt. A counter-attack is planned, for which the fuel dumps at Tobruk are a critical impediment. In order to aid the attack, a group of British commandos and German Jews make their way undercover through 800 miles of desert, to destroy the fuel dumps starving the Germans of fuel.

Germany, May 1945, deep in the Harz Mountains a U.S. tank crew discovers a platoon of Germans preparing to ambush U.S. supply trucks.

The men of Bravo Company are facing a battle that's all uphill… up Hamburger Hill. Fourteen war-weary soldiers are battling for a mud-covered mound of earth so named because it chews up soldiers like chopped meat. They are fighting for their country, their fellow soldiers and their lives. War is hell, but this is worse. Hamburger Hill tells it the way it was, the way it really was. It's a raw, gritty and totally unrelenting dramatic depiction of one of the fiercest battles of America's bloodiest war. This happened. Hamburger Hill - war at its worst, men at their best.

U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle takes his sole mission—protect his comrades—to heart and becomes one of the most lethal snipers in American history. His pinpoint accuracy not only saves countless lives but also makes him a prime target of insurgents. Despite grave danger and his struggle to be a good husband and father to his family back in the States, Kyle serves four tours of duty in Iraq. However, when he finally returns home, he finds that he cannot leave the war behind.

A young British soldier must find his way back to safety after his unit accidentally abandons him during a riot in the streets of Belfast.

Afghanistan. War correspondent Elsa Casanova is taken hostage by the Taliban. Faced with her imminent execution, a Special Forces unit is dispatched to free her. In some of the world’s most breathtaking yet hostile landscapes, a relentless pursuit begins between her kidnappers who have no intention of letting their prey escape them and a group of soldiers who risk their lives in pursuit of their single aim – to bring her home alive. This strong, independent woman and these men of duty are thrown together and forced to confront situations of great danger that inextricably bind them – emotionally, violently and intimately.

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.

The story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots to fly in a combat squadron during World War II.

A team of CIA agents and special forces head into Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in an attempt to dismantle the Taliban.

Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America's entry into World War II. Gordon must send his outnumbered band of fighter pilots out against overwhelming odds while juggling the disparate personalities and problems of his fellow flyers.

1968 American war film about the formation and first mission of the joint Canadian-American WWII special forces winter and mountain unit formally called 1st Special Service Force, but commonly known as “The Devil’s Brigade”. The film dramatises the Brigade's first mission in the Italian Campaign, the task of capturing the German mountain stronghold Monte la Difensa, in December 1943. The film is based on the 1966 book of the same name, co-written by American novelist and historian Robert H. Adleman and Col. George Walton, a member of the brigade.

Korean War, April 1953. Lieutenant Clemons, leader of the King company of the United States Infantry, is ordered to recapture Pork Chop Hill, occupied by a powerful Chinese Army force, while, just seventy miles away, at nearby the village of Panmunjom, a tense cease-fire conference is celebrated.

The American destroyer escort, the USS Haynes commanded by Robert Mitchum, detects a German U-Boat, commanded by Curt Jürgens, resulting in a prolonged, deadly battle of wits.

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.

The Dirty Dozen meet the Stiff Upper Lip. A British Petroleum executive is assigned to work with the British Army in North Africa handling port duties for incoming fuels.

Based on a real-life story, this drama focuses on a small group of Allied soldiers in Burma who are held captive by the Japanese. Capt. Ernest Gordon (Ciaran McMenamin), Lt. Jim Reardon (Kiefer Sutherland) and Maj. Ian Campbell (Robert Carlyle) are among the military officers kept imprisoned and routinely beaten and deprived of food. While Campbell wants to rebel and attempt an escape, Gordon tries to take a more stoic approach, an attitude that proves to be surprisingly resonant.