12 Must-Watch Best Military Movies on Netflix Right Now

Military movies have always been a hit because they’re more than just explosions and battles, they dive deep into stories of courage, sacrifice, and survival. Netflix has a solid collection of best military movies, from gritty modern missions to powerful tales based on real events.

In this guide, we’ve rounded up the best military movies on Netflix that are absolutely worth watching. Whether you’re just getting into the genre or you’re a long-time fan of the best war movies, these titles won’t disappoint.

You may also want to know: What Does Limited Series Mean On Netflix? Top 10 Must-Watch!

Top 12 Military Movies on Netflix to Stream

1. All Quiet on the Western Front

• Release Year: 2022
• Director: Edward Berger
• Main Cast: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer
• IMDb Rating: 7.8/10

Set during World War I, the film follows Paul, a young German soldier who starts off eager to serve his country, only to be crushed by the horrific reality of the battlefield. From bloody trench warfare to watching his comrades die one by one, Paul’s journey is a slow descent into numbness and despair.

Rather than focus on heroism, this military movies shows the emotional and physical cost of war in brutal detail. Tanks roll over fallen bodies, soldiers collect dog tags from the dead, and even quiet moments feel heavy with hopelessness. The film won 4 Academy Awards, including Best International Feature and Best Cinematography, and has rightfully become one of the best war movies.

2. Beasts of No Nation

• Release Year: 2015
• Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
• Main Cast: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah
• IMDb Rating: 7.7/10

Set in a war-torn West African country, this film tells the story of Agu, a young boy who loses his family and is forced to join a rebel group as a child soldier. What follows isn’t filled with large-scale battles, but rather a quiet, haunting descent into violence, trauma, and survival. The camera rarely looks away, capturing the brutal process of how war strips a child of innocence and remolds him into a weapon.

What makes Beasts of No Nation stand out among military movies on Netflix is its emotional honesty. Abraham Attah’s eyes carry the film, wide with fear, later hollowed by loss. This war movie received critical praise worldwide and earned multiple awards, including an Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead and a SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor.

3. The King

• Release Year: 2019
• Director: David Michôd
• Main Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Robert Pattinson
• IMDb Rating: 7.3/10

The King follows Hal, a reluctant prince who unexpectedly ascends the throne as King Henry V in 15th-century England. Far from being a typical heroic rise, the film focuses on his personal transformation, an escapist and weak outsider to a ruler navigating betrayal, political games, and the heavy cost of war.

What makes this stand out among military movies on Netflix is how much it invests in character. Timothée Chalamet plays Hal not as a warrior king, but as a young man growing into brutal responsibility, torn between his ideals and the demands of power. Though The King didn’t sweep major awards, the war movie was praised for its realistic tone.

4. The Forgotten Battle

• Release Year: 2020
• Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
• Main Cast: Gijs Blom, Jamie Flatters, Susan Radder
• IMDb Rating: 7.1/10

Set during the lesser-known Battle of the Scheldt in late World War II, the film follows three separate but intersecting stories: a Dutch resistance girl, a British glider pilot, and a Dutch man who joins the Nazis. Rather than focusing on large-scale combat, most of the film deals with how these individuals experience war through small choices, unexpected betrayals, and painful moral dilemmas.

What makes this film stand out is its refusal to simplify. There are no clear heroes or villains, just people trying to survive, or make a difference, within a chaotic and violent world. Even Allied soldiers are shown as fearful or confused, while some Axis fighters hold onto their beliefs to the very end.

5. 1917

• Release Year: 2019
• Director: Sam Mendes
• Main Cast: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Benedict Cumberbatch
• IMDb Rating: 8.2/10

Set during World War I, 1917 follows two young British soldiers, Blake and Schofield, who are given an urgent mission: to deliver a message deep into enemy territory that could save 1,600 lives—including Blake’s brother. The film is famously shot to appear as one continuous take, pulling the viewer into an unbroken, real-time journey across treacherous landscapes, abandoned bunkers, and eerily quiet battlefields.

But 1917 is not a story of grand heroics, it’s a tribute to small acts of courage under impossible circumstances. Schofield’s transformation, from reluctant participant to determined survivor, is portrayed not through speeches or glory, but through a quiet persistence that honors the weight of loss and loyalty. As one of the best war movies of the decade, 1917 won 3 Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography.

6. The Champion

• Release Year: 2020
• Director: Maciej Barczewski
• Main Cast: Piotr Głowacki, Jan Szydłowski, Grzegorz Małecki
• IMDb Rating: 6.8/10

Based on the real-life story of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, The Champion follows a Polish boxer imprisoned in Auschwitz during WWII. Forced to fight for survival, Teddy is pitted against German guards and fellow prisoners in brutal boxing matches. Each bout becomes a form of resistance, not just for him but for the broken spirits watching from the sidelines.

What sets this film apart isn't just the fusion of sports and historical atrocity, but its raw portrayal of inner strength under unimaginable conditions. Rather than painting Teddy as a heroic savior, the film shows a man constantly teetering between survival instinct and moral exhaustion.

7. My Way

• Release Year: 2011
• Director: Kang Je-gyu
• Main Cast: Jang Dong-gun, Joe Odagiri, Fan Bingbing
• IMDb Rating: 7.6/10

Inspired by a true story, the film follows a Korean man who’s forcibly drafted into the Japanese army during World War II. Through a series of unbelievable twists, he ends up fighting for three different armies across Asia and Europe, showing how unpredictable and tragic war can be. He grew to be friends with a Japanese rival when they were drafted on different fronts of the war.

What makes My Way deeply affecting isn’t just its scale, but its lens on identity and survival. There are only glances exchanged in muddy trenches, forced uniforms, and silent decisions made in the midst of moral collapse. As the two protagonists are stripped of nationality and pride, what remains is a human bond forged in shared helplessness.

8. Dunkirk

• Release Year: 2017
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Main Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance
• IMDb Rating: 7.8/10

If you’re looking for one of the most intense and visually stunning military movies on Netflix, Dunkirk is a top pick. The film tells the real-life story of the Dunkirk evacuation during World War II, where hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers were trapped on a beach surrounded by enemy forces.

The director completely disrupted the story timeline, using flashbacks on one hand and chronological narrative on the other, and mixed the two together, making the story full of suspense. Dunkirk won 3 Academy Awards, including Best Editing and Best Sound Mixing, which explains why every moment feels so real and powerful.

9. Black Hawk Down

• Release Year: 2001
• Director: Ridley Scott
• Main Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana
• IMDb Rating: 7.7/10

Based on real events from the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down chronicles a U.S. military operation that spirals into chaos when two helicopters are shot down in enemy territory. What begins as a swift, one-hour mission turns into a grueling 15-hour street battle, with American soldiers outnumbered and cut off, forced to fight their way through hostile urban terrain as enemy fire rains down from every rooftop and alley.

Ridley Scott doesn't glorify the war—he immerses you in its disarray. One of the film’s most haunting threads is the Delta Force operators who willingly rope down into a crash site, knowing they won’t survive, just to protect a fellow soldier. It won 2 Academy Awards for Best Editing and Best Sound, which helps explain why it still feels just as intense more than 20 years later.

10. Hurt locker

• Release Year: 2008
• Director: Kathryn Bigelow
• Main Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty
• IMDb Rating: 7.5/10

Set during the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker follows Sergeant William James, a bomb disposal expert whose calm under pressure borders on addiction. His team needs to move through Baghdad's shattered streets, and dismantle explosives buried in trash piles or strapped to civilians.

What sets the film apart isn’t just the tension of each mission, but how James approaches danger with a disturbing sense of purpose. The film uses a documentary shooting technique, and the shaky shoulder-mounted camera lens takes us to the real Iraqi battlefield. Hurt locker won 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, making it one of the most critically acclaimed military movies of the 2000s.

11. Fury

• Release Year: 2014
• Director: David Ayer
• Main Cast: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman
• IMDb Rating: 7.6/10

The story is set during the final months of World War II and follows a seasoned tank crew led by a battle-hardened sergeant named Wardaddy. As the war comes to a brutal close, they’re sent on a dangerous mission deep behind enemy lines in their Sherman tank, "Fury." As one of the more visually striking war movies, Fury shows the war from inside the cramped, tense space of a tank.

Fury isn’t about heroes, it’s about what’s left when all the humanity has been stripped away. It explores the devastation of war on human nature and directly shows us that "war turns people into ghosts."

12. Saving Private Ryan

• Release Year: 1998
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Main Cast: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore
• IMDb Rating: 8.6/10

The film opens with the Normandy landings—twenty minutes of near-documentary realism: bullets tearing through water, limbs flying, soldiers crying for their mothers. From that chaos, Captain Miller is sent on a mission to retrieve one soldier, Private James Ryan, whose brothers have all been killed in action.

The sounds of gunfire, tank explosions, and soldiers' screams form the film’s only background music. Through these brutal battle scenes, the director doesn’t just depict war, he uses it as a lens to explore the depths of human nature. This war movie is one of the most powerful portrayals of the brutality and bloodshed of World War II ever captured on screen.

How to Download Military Movies on Netflix to Watch Offline?

Streaming war movies is great, until you come across a place with no Wi-Fi or you're dealing with slow internet that makes watching your favorite military movies on Netflix feel more like a chore than a relaxing night in. That’s why downloading your favorites is the smart move.

VidiCable is a professional video downloader built specifically to help you download videos from Netflix and 1000+ other platforms. With VidiCable, you can download full HD (up to 1080p) versions of military movies on Netflix, and choose between MP4 or MKV formats. It keeps the cinematic feel alive by preserving Dolby Atmos audio, so those war scenes hit harder with surround sound. You also get to keep multilingual audio and subtitles, which is great if you prefer original language tracks or need subtitles.

VidiCable runs at 5x faster download speed, so you can prep a movie night in minutes. Plus, with a built-in browser that supports over 1000 sites, including Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and more, finding and saving your next war film is super convenient.

Tutorial: Download Best Military Movies on Netflix to Watch Offline

Step 1 Select Streaming Site

Launch VidiCable and select Netflix from the built-in platform list. Log into your Netflix account as prompted.

Step 2 Customize Download Settings

Click the gear icon to adjust settings like video format (MP4/MKV), output resolution (up to 1080p), audio language, subtitle type, and output folder.

Step 3 Search For Movies

Type the name of the military movie (like Fury or Saving Private Ryan) into the search bar, or browse using the built-in Netflix browser.

Step 4 Select Desired Audio, Video Quality and More

Click the download icon and open the Advanced Download window to fine-tune resolution, audio tracks, and subtitles before finalizing.

Step 5 Download Military Movies on Netflix

Hit the download button and let VidiCable do the rest. Your favorite military movies on Netflix will be ready to watch offline, anytime, anywhere.

FAQs about Best Military Movies on Netflix

What military movie is based on a true story on Netflix?

Netflix offers several compelling military movies based on true events. Some notable titles include: 1917, The Champion, Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, The Siege of Jadotville, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, and Operation Mincemeat.

What is the 13 Army movie on Netflix?

The 13 Army movie on Netflix refers to 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. This 2016 film, directed by Michael Bay, portrays the true story of six members of a security team who fought to defend the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, during an attack by militants on September 11, 2012. The movie delves into the intense 13-hour battle they endured, highlighting their bravery and resilience.

Conclusion

This article introduced 12 must-watch military movies on Netflix, including powerful war dramas, true story adaptations, and unforgettable action films. These are some of the best military movies ever made, and whether you're new to the genre or a long-time fan, they’re all worth adding to your watchlist. To enjoy these military movies on Netflix anytime without worrying about internet or buffering, try downloading them with VidiCable.