Aside from the monthly Matthew McConaughey rom-com, there’s no more go-to movie genre than the combat flick, which means they can't all be winners. But here are 60 films that, when summoned to blow things up within budget, brilliantly answered the call of duty.

MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS (1-13)

1. FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

Kubrick crafted one film with two distinct parts, following a group of fresh U.S. Marines from boot camp to combat duty in the Tet offensive.
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey
Best Defense: Platoon made it OK to portray ’Nam honestly on screen, but FMJ made it unnerving. It’s not as personal an account, but it leaves more stubborn stains.

2. GLORY (1989)

Bigotry during the Civil War wasn’t limited to the Confederacy, as this story of the Union’s first all-black volunteer fighting unit beautifully depicts in the year’s Oscar winner for Best Cinematography.
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes
Best Defense: Inarguably the best Civil War film ever made, every corny maxim of duty and courage coolly goes down like a greased musket rod.

3. THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967)

A major in America’s OSS trains a group of doomed convicts into an elite special missions force tasked with raiding a fortified Nazi chateau full of vacationing officers.
Starring: Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland
Best Defense: About as far from procedural drama as you can get on this list, D12 is action-adventure with an individualist spirit that made slaughtering Nazis fun again!

4. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

When a World War II private’s three brothers are all killed in action, a platoon is dispatched to retrieve him and send him home amid the European Theater’s last major offensive.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Paul Giamatti, Ed Burns
Best Defense: From the fury of its 22-minute version of Normandy to its portrayal of a mother’s tripled loss, no movie better presents the full spectrum of war.

5. BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001)

This is an insightful account of U.S. actions in Somalia, which focuses on a hostage extraction operation gone as wrong as possible, in the most hostile environment imaginable.
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Sam Shepard
Best Defense: If its savage parade of slain U.S. pilots dragged through the streets of Mogadishu doesn’t gut you, something's just not right with you.

6. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)

British POWs in World War II’s Pacific Theater are forced to build a bridge for the enemy, but an escaped U.S. prisoner is determined to destroy it.
Starring: Alec Guinness, William Holden, Sessue Hayakawa
Best Defense: It won Best Picture, Actor, Adapted Screenplay and four other Oscars for its intricate exploration of its competing characters, codes and cultures.

7. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)

Based on the accounts of a German World War I vet, it timelessly charts the change in recruits’ idealism to disillusionment as romantic notions of war clash with grim reality.
Starring: Louis Woolheim, Lew Ayres
Best Defense: Eighty years later, it’s not unusual to find this Best Picture winner atop a list of war movies for its uncommonly unsettling account of the warfare of the time.

8. STALAG 17 (1953)

An unscrupulous U.S. prisoner of World War II is suspected by his fellow campmates of spying on behalf of their German captors.
Starring: William Holden, Otto Preminger, Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Peter Graves
Best Defense: Holden’s Academy Award-winning performance is a clinic on cool that provided an early blueprint of the complex, but often simplified, modern anti-hero.

9. THE LONGEST DAY (1962)

World War II’s D-Day invasion is ambitiously told in epic detail from both the Allied and Axis perspectives, and in their native languages.
Starring: John Wayne, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda
Best Defense: …Eddie Albert, Roddy McDowall, Peter Lawford, Red Buttons, Robert Wagner, Paul Anka, George Segal, Rod Steiger…

10. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

An assassin is sent into the deepest recesses of Cambodia to terminate a rogue colonel turned tribal god, witnessing every absurdity of the war along the way.
Starring: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper
Best Defense: The Redux makes four hours feel like five, but its hyper-dramatized exploration of the Vietnam War’s mythic horrors is unequaled.

11. THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963)

The largely true story of the Nazis’ brilliant idea to isolate the most skilled escape artists among their Allied captives in a single “escape-proof,” maximum-security prison.
Starring: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasance, James Coburn
Best Defense: Stalag 17 with a sense of humor, this story of 76 men and their initially successful, ultimately tragic 11-month plan is adventure of the highest order.

12. PATTON (1970)

The profile of one of America’s most famous, most egotistical most bat-s@#t-crazy military generals, and his campaigns through Africa and Europe during World War II.
Starring: George C. Scott, Karl Malden
Best Defense: It won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Director and Actor, which Scott declined, calling the Academy Awards “a meat parade.”

13. PLATOON (1986)

Oliver Stone’s autobiographical account of his experiences in Vietnam charts the change in disposition of its characters in the face of the war’s shockingly commonplace atrocities.
Starring: Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Forest Whitaker, Keith David
Best Defense: All Quiet on the Western Front for the Baby Boomer generation, it broke the 10-year cultural gag order placed on portrayals of the divisive Vietnam War.

CHECK OUT THE COMPLETE LIST OF THE GREATEST WAR MOVIES HERE:

Medal of Honor (1-13) -- Distinguished Service (14-46) -- Silver Star (47-60)