Hey, movies are movies so it wouldn't be fair to expect them to play out like documentaries BUT there have been a few war movies that I've seen in the past 15 years that strayed so far from historical fact that I felt like I was watching a parody. The 5 movies that immediately come to my mind are:


1. U-571

2. Red Tails

3. The Red Baron

4. The Patriot

5. Pearl Harbor

Downfall. Hitler never sent any men to the North Pole.

A shorter list would be accurate war films.

LOL! Good point.

I'd say these 5 are pretty loyal to the historical facts,


1. Patton (Yeah, I know the voice done by GC Scott is totally wrong)

2. Tora, Tora, Tora

3. Platoon

4. Gettysburg

5. Glory

-Flyboys

-Windtalkers

-Enemy at the Gates

-Behind Enemy Lines

-The Green Berets

Wait, are we doing accurate now? Don't confuse me...I'm old!


-Fury

http://www.historynet.com/fury-a-tankers-eye-view.htm

Inglorious Basterds. I doubt Hitler died that way....

v6,
boNes

Lol. It's a Tarantino film so it's safe to say that adherence to historical accuracy was never intended. I look at that film as a highly stylized comic book version of WW II.

There isn't enough time in the day but Errol Flynn's Objective, Burma readily sprang to mind.

Though I love the movie, the ships used were wrong in many ways. However, none of the actual ships were in existence anymore, so they did have to work with what they had.

True. Nagumo's flagship was very obviously a US carrier but in 1969 there was no CGI and building a full scale replica of a Japanese carrier would have been cost prohibitive.

"The Red Baron."
I'm not sure why they even bothered to say it was about Richtofen. There's not a shred of accuracy. They actually have Roy Brown and The Baron becoming friends. Later, Brown helps get Von R's "girlfriend" over British lines so she could attend his funeral!!!! WTF!?
Lothar, his brother is shown as this fanatical Prussian who chides Manfred for feeling that Germany is going to lose the war. Lothar was a heavy drinker and a ladies man in real life. He was the exact opposite of Manfred. They reversed the two men's personalities for the film. Lothar was killed after the war while flying a plane with a well known German actress. She perished too, of course. He was pretty much of a wild man. Von R was stoic and stiff according to those who knew him, and was a bit awkward around the ladies. You'd never know that from the film.
I disliked it very much. As you can tell, I suppose.

What I'm more interested in is the most historically accurate war films. I've pretty much dodged all the ones listed as inaccurate so far however I was unfortunate enough to have to sit through Pearl Harbour when it came out.

The only thing that saves Pearl Harbor, for me, is that I enjoyed the flying scenes. It could have been good. A story about two buddies who wind up fighting the Japanese over Pearl Harbor. Why not?
But Geez. The U.S. Army Air Corp did NOT send pilots to fight for England. The Americans who went there were civilian volunteers.
And why would Doolittle get a bunch of fighter pilots together to fly B-25's to Japan? There were no qualified bomber pilots in A.A.F. in 1942? Its almost an insult to the men who really did it.
The people who did Tora Tora Tora are to be commended for sticking so close to historical accuracy, even at the expense of boring some of the audience.

Was Pearl Harbor historically inaccurate? I mean, there is some nonsense about a 3-way love triangle or some such thing, but the event itself was reasonably represented yes?

(It was a terrible awful movie. But I did enjoy the main attack action)

I guess you didn't read the post by Pooch?

Doesn't make much sense to criticise a movie for being historically inaccurate. It's a director's medium, not history's. Subject to rewriting and the director's chosen interpretation. The crime would be a documentary that's historically inaccurate. If the movie entertains and maybe even sparks some interest to learn more about a subject, then it's done its job.

I disagree. To some extent a film is bound to have some minor changes to the facts in order to make the story more dramatic and interesting but when you are talking about major changes to historical facts it's really due to the desire of the producers/writers/directors to push a specific viewpoint. Take "The Patriot" for example. What was really the purpose of showing the British to be essentially the same as 18th century Nazis? It was done simply to perpetuate the notion that one side in a conflict was all good while the other side was all bad.

Like I said, a director's medium, subject to rewriting and the director's chosen interpretation.

You have a much higher opinion of directors than I do, I don't give them carte blanche to rewrite history however they please and then still claim their work as being representative of a historical event. If you're going to call a movie "Pearl Harbor" you should be obligated to at least try to be historically correct.