The 25 best films about the veteran experience

Bruce Willis stars as a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD as he tries to help his niece get to know the father she never met as he comes to grips with losing him in the war, years after he last saw action "In Country." The film was part of a wave of films meant to raise awareness of vets who languished in literal silence about their years in a war no one wanted them to be in. 

A veteran film for the MTV generation dealing with the effects of its first substantial war, "Stop-Loss" stars Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Channing Tatum in a story about friends coming home after tour of duty in Iraq. The film introduced viewers to the concept of stop-loss, a practice where servicemen can be pressed back into service for an additional tour. Couple this with the horrors of PTSD, and it delivers an impact all too real and for audiences at the time, all too sudden.

Stephen Metcalfe adapted his own 1982 play about a Vietnam vet (Robert DeNiro) who tries to save a friend and fellow vet (Ed Harris) from wallowing in alcoholism, trying to forget the war the only way he can. Add to the mix a sister who's been locked in a struggle of her own trying to care for her suffering brother as DeNiro falls in love with her, and the film creates a triangle of damaged human beings who just want to be able to move on. 

Before his massive success with "Game of Thrones," David Benioff penned this remake of a 2004 Danish drama about a soldier returning home to find his wife developing feelings for his ex-convict brother. "Brothers" examines the emotional chaos that comes when prisoners of war come home to a life that moved on without them. A powerful performance from Tobey Maguire as a vet who can barely hold it together makes the film a must-see.

For some heroes of the Greatest Generation, coming home is harder than staying in battle. Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" focuses on the fallout that came as a result of winning one of the most crucial and costly battles of WWII atop the island of Iwo Jima. The film shows how a chance photo showing the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi would spin into something larger than all of the men in the platoon. What remains is a bittersweet, yet poignant look at the perils of accidental heroism.

The global War on Terror was less than five years old in 2005, but films depicting the lives of vets scarred by war were coming out on a consistent basis. Director David Ayer took his favorite genre of L.A. crime drama and sprinkled it with the ravages of PTSD in "Harsh Times." Christian Bale stars as Jim Davis, an ex-Army Ranger who turns to crime following a string of failures all stemming from his debilitating PTSD. To make matters worse, Davis drags his best friend (Freddy Rodriguez) into the troubles, leading to a climax that is as brutal as it is heartbreaking. 

Few films dive into the black veteran experience, making "Dead Presidents" both unique and necessary. Anthony (Larenz Tate) is a kid from South Bronx who sees little future for his life, choosing to enlist in the Marines instead of trying to get into college. The horrors of war leave Anthony even further disillusioned as he survives his tour in Vietnam only to return home to indifference and apathy. This leads him to plan an armored car heist with some of his friends and fellow vets with disastrous consequences.

Gregory Peck struggles to handle life away from the battlefield in this adaptation of Sloan Wilson’s 1955 family drama. Peck delivers a dignified performance as a man who just wants peace in his life, something that gets derailed when he discovers that he fathered a child with an Italian woman while stationed in Italy. The result is a film that never looks away from its subject, warts and all.

"In the Valley of Elah" centers on real-life issues veterans encounter overseas and at home, including alcoholism and violence. Tommy Lee Jones stars as Hank Deerfield — a Vietnam War veteran and retired Army investigator — searching for his son, a soldier who went missing soon after coming home from Iraq. The film soon turns into a murder mystery as he learns that his son was killed after a night on the town with members of his platoon. With the help of a local police detective (Charlize Theron), Deerfield seeks answers, while the film expounds on how the growing debate over veterans' issues threatens to spin out of control.

Director Francis Ford Coppola presents "Gardens of Stone," a Vietnam War-era homefront drama adapted from a novel by Nicholas Proffitt, focusing on those assigned to guard Arlington National Cemetery. James Caan gives a sobering performance as an Army sergeant frustrated by being sidelined while younger men rush off to give their lives for the nation as he is forced to languish in a position that only exists to help lay the dead to rest.

"Coming Home" is largely credited as the film that kicked off the movement to honor Vietnam vets who were only ever the target of hatred and indifference of an apathetic America. Jane Fonda stars as Sally Hyde who meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), a loner who is paralyzed and disillusioned with the war. The film does an excellent job of depicting how war takes a toll not just on the soldier, but loved ones in the form of fear and loneliness. 

Despite finding financial and critical success upon its release in 1994, Robert Zemeckis's Oscar-winning "Forrest Gump" is often derided for its pie-in-the-sky airbrushing of historical events in the '50s, '60s and '70s. Despite the various accusations and praises, at the heart of the film is a story about veterans. While Tom Hanks' performance of the titular character is sweetly dimwitted, the film takes great care to show the experience of coming home from war and the challenges — both great and small — veterans must face to find a sense of normalcy after war.

"The Messenger," a film about the dark task of informing loved ones that a soldier has died in the line of duty, brings viewers another view of the hell that war can be. Woody Harrelson puts in a solid performance as a casualty notification officer who breaks in a younger soldier, fresh from the Iraq war, as he struggles with alcoholism and the perils of a relationship with a war widow. 

At its heart, "Rolling Thunder" is an exploitation film, but it's also a timely examination of a Vietnam POW (William Devane) who returns home a hero to a family who barely remembers he ever existed. While he deals with the slow loss of his wife and son, a gang of criminals assaults the family, leaving him for dead. The rest of the film is a violent tale of revenge, but it's the bond between the POW and his loyal buddy (Tommy Lee Jones) that leaves the greatest impression as brothers in arms take their war from the jungles to the streets of Mexico on a campaign of vengeance.

Possibly the grimmest and most cynical MGM musical ever, "It's Always Fair Weather" takes a surprisingly hard-hitting look at life for veterans in a consumerist postwar America as a group of vets (Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd) reunite a decade after coming home from WWII, only to learn their differences and disillusionments leave the former war buddies with nothing in common. Sure, there are a number of dance sequences and plenty of slapstick humor to go around, but the movie is about the three realizing that they don't really like each other anymore and have nothing in common but their service memories and their disappointment at how they've each failed to live up to their dreams. That the film is a standard Technicolor outing brings with it a sense of irony that in the end, nothing is as good as it seems.

Author Dalton Trumbo adapts his own 1938 novel to starkly horrific effect in this tale of Army soldier Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms) who finds himself disfigured beyond recognition as a result of an artillery shell that should've killed him, but instead leaves him unable to see, speak or hear — essentially leaving him trapped in a prison from which there is no escape. The film alternates from his hospital bed to a series of dreams and hallucinations which add up to an everlasting nightmare for Joe, who simply wants to be able to die.

Adapted from Jim Harrison's 1979 novella of three brothers who all leave home to fight in WWI, "Legends of the Fall" tells the sad tale of Tristan (Brad Pitt), Alfred (Aidan Quinn) and Samuel (Henry Thomas) as Samuel dies while overseas, leaving Tristan and Alfred to fight over Samuel’s fiancée, Susannah (Julia Ormond). While not the conventional film about veterans coming home, this family drama pulls no punches about the realities of survivor's guilt and how these struggles threaten to tear a family apart.

Overlooked and underrated, on the surface "Jacob's Ladder" feels like your normal horror film, but in reality, it's a treatise on the ability to let go, while illustrating how PTSD can affect veterans from all walks of life. It's hard to tell what's real and what's not in the movie, which is part of the film's disturbing charm to be sure. But the bittersweet and realistic performance from Tim Robbins as a mailman vet who struggles with his time in the war goes from sobering to frightening up until a climax that will leave you thinking for a long time to come.

Michael Cimino's magnum opus, "The Deer Hunter" examines how the Vietnam War took a devastating toll on a group of friends from a small-town Pennsylvania community. Featuring solid performances from Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, Meryl Streep and John Cazale in his final role, the film delivers an impactful presentation of the hardships and sadness of survivor's guilt and the realization that some people who survive the war never really come home from it. Best remembered for its Russian Roulette scenes, the depiction of the loss of innocence makes this film every bit the classic that it is.

John Frankenheimer delivers a nightmarish look at a pair of soldiers, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), who return home from the Korean War to find that they've been brainwashed with the goal of programming them as covert agents for the Chinese. As Marco fights to expose the truth, he faces the wrath of Sen. John Iselin, a highly vocal anti-Communist demagogue, and his wife (Angela Lansbury) as well as Shaw's overbearing and controlling mother who's hiding deadly secrets of her own.

Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo is an action movie icon, best remembered for mowing down countless scores of communists with his giant machine gun. But before the bombast of later installments, "First Blood" gives a different picture of a veteran who is treated with impunity by a small-town sheriff (Brian Dennehy) before escaping and kicking off a war of his own. Unlike the sequels, "First Blood" isn't about racking up kills, but rather an examination of how Vietnam vets could be tasked with operating millions of dollars in heavy equipment but can't be trusted to get a job parking cars after the war. The final monologue is full of unexpected emotion and will be a thing you remember for some time to come.

While not usually touted as a film about veterans, "The Outlaw Josey Wales" takes place against the backdrop of the ending of the Civil War, and we see the lives of confederate soldiers who turn themselves in only to be slaughtered at the hands of Union soldiers. As the titular character, Clint Eastwood delivers a subtle yet slightly haunting performance as a man good with a pistol, but also in search of a peace he has never found since his days as a farmer. 

Kathryn Bigelow more than effectively broke into the "boys' club" as she made history as the first female director to win an Oscar in her tale of the life and times of a bomb squad in Iraq. Jeremy Renner makes the absolute best of his role as a man who, while in the streets of Iraq, could disarm just about any bomb without loss of limb but at home is so wracked with PTSD that buying a box of cereal can keep him paralyzed in fear. 

Tom Cruise's signature role, "Born on the Fourth of July" follows the story of U.S. Marine Ron Kovic, who comes home from Vietnam battered and paralyzed but surprisingly optimistic despite his injuries. In time, the psychological damage wears on Kovic, only increasing his anger toward the war that took his legs. "Born on the Fourth of July" was instrumental in softening the view of Vietnam vets to U.S. citizens, delivering audiences a film that's equal parts thoughtful, hopeful and heartbreaking.

Hands down the greatest veteran's film, "The Best Years of Our Lives," William Wyler's 1946 classic about the postwar lives of three WWII vets, was not only ahead of its time, it also shows a surprisingly honest look at the readjustment process, different for each vet as they try (and sometimes fail) to adjust to civilian life once again. Featuring Harold Russell, an amputee with zero acting credits to his name, who came away from the film with the rare honor of being the only performer to win two Academy Awards for the same performance. Even though it was released less than a year after the end of the war, it gives viewers an honest depiction as to what coming home looks like to a number of vets.