Thread: War/Baddass Movies That Should Be Made

There's fifty bazillion Vietnam War films. Lately Iraq has been the big seller. Tons of WW2 and even lots of Civil War films.

What about:

Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Mujahideen. Massoud was a brilliant and kickass dude. They kicked THE SOVIET UNION out of their country. I would think this chapter in history would make a very compelling film.

Simo Häyhä. Vasily Zaytsev got his movie, there have been several charactors based on Carlos Hathcock - why not a film about the most unstoppable killing machine ever to walk the earth? This guy makes fictional charactors like Rambo seem like pacifists. Had the Winter War gone on any longer there would be no Russians living today.

Why shitty bonehead movies like ___ ________ get made while these two guys are ignored is beyond me. Hollywood hasn't run out of ideas - they just stopped looking. Look east, dumbasses.

The comment about the Hangover is a little rediculous, but whatever...

When was the last good American Revolution movie? The Patriot doesn't count. There has to be a compelling Hollywood story in there somewhere.

you didnt like the hangover? you must be a ruhtard..

War films to a discussion of the alleged merits of The Hangover in 3 posts! That's gotata be some kind of record.

Deleting any reference to The Hangover to try to keep this on track.

PaSux - good comment of the lack of Rev War films.

Originally Posted by Jer

Simo Häyhä. Vasily Zaytsev got his movie, there have been several charactors based on Carlos Hathcock - why not a film about the most unstoppable killing machine ever to walk the earth? This guy makes fictional charactors like Rambo seem like pacifists. Had the Winter War gone on any longer there would be no Russians living today.

And now I know (and Jer's pic makes more sense)

The Badass of the Week.
Simo Häyhä


In the winter of 1939, the Soviet Union was dicks. Russian Premier Josef Stalin thought it would be really fucking hilarious if he all of a sudden sent like two million of his dudes over to nearby Finland to start kicking everyone's asses and seizing whatever land he could get his borsch-covered hands on, while simultaneously kicking puppies and shouting profanities at inanimate objects in a vodka-and-caviar induced roid rage. While this may have been a laugh riot for Stalin and his numbnuts cronies, the Finnish people obviously were a little unhappy with the prospect of having all their cross-country skis, Winter Olympics gold medals and salmon fishing boats captured by a rampaging horde of godless commie bastards, so they decided to open an extra-large can of whoop-ass and give the Russkies the ballsack kicking they were apparently looking for.

Now when you think of Finland, the phrase "military powerhouse" isn't exactly the first thing that pops into your head. Likewise, when you looked at Simo Häyhä, a slight-framed Finnish farmer who didn't stand an inch over five feet tall, you also probably didn't think "total fucking unstoppable badass". Well let's just say that first impressions can be deceiving.

Simo was a member of a Finnish organization roughly equivalent to the minutemen of the American Revolution. He had done his state-mandated one-year term in the Finnish Army, reaching the rank of corporal, and was living a peaceful life in a farming village not far from the Russian border, spending his days farming, hunting, and crushing giant logs into sawdust with his bare hands. When the Soviets crossed the border into Finland with the expressed purpose of busting Finnish heads, Simo was called up into service. He went out to the wood shed behind his house, grabbed his old-school Russian-made Mosin-Nagant M28/30 rifle and headed out to take some commies behind a proverbial woodshed of his own.

Häyhä's specialty was his knowledge of the forests, his enduring patience and his impeccable rifle marksmanship. A sniper by trade, he would dress up in all-white camouflage, sneak through the woods with only a day's worth of food and couple clips of ammunition, and then lie in wait for any Russian stupid enough to wander into his killzone. His first battle-experience came in the hard-fought Kollaa campaign, where a severely outnumbered Finnish force bore the brunt of a large-scale Russian assault. Temperatures at this time ranged from -20 to -40 degrees Celsius, and the entire forest was covered with several feet of snow. While this played havoc on the inexperienced and under-equipped Russian invaders, the Finns were right at home in it because FINLAND IS FUCKING COLD AS SHIT ALL THE TIME and they're used to it there. Throughout this campaign, Häyhä basically just ran around doling out head-shots like the ice cream man gives out Dove bars on a hot sunny day in the Sahara desert. His personal best was fucking twenty-five kills in a single day. That's like an entire baseball team.

Throughout the Winter War (as it would come to be known), Simo Häyhä ran around being what experienced HALO players would call a "camping fag", and scoring enough kill shots to make fucking RoboCop and the Terminator hide their heads in shame. He would come to be known throughout the Russian Army as "The White Death", and at one point in the war they even went so far as to try and launch a couple of goddamned artillery strikes on locations at which they thought he might be hiding. That's desperation there - like even more desperate than a nymphomaniac babe at a convention for castrated male models.

After hearing about how much ass Häyhä was kicking out on the frozen tundra of eastern Finland with an antiquated bolt-action piece-of-shit rifle, the Finnish High Command decided to give him a special award: a custom-built Sako M2/28-30 Sniper Rifle of Headshots +3. He put this to good use, killing the ever-loving shit out of anyone that crossed him. On several occasions the Russians sent their own snipers to take him out, but Simo managed to win those duels every time. You see, Häyhä not only passed out long-range silent death to anyone with a red star on his hat, but he did it without the aid of a telescopic sight. He preferred to use the rifle's regular iron sights because it allowed him to present a smaller target, and because several of the commie snipers he moked out were given away by a glint of light reflecting off the lenses of their scopes. He obviously didn't want to fall to this fate, so he went balls-out and wasted assholes the old-fashioned (and unarguably the more hardcore) way.

Finally, on 2 March 1940, some Soviet bastard got a lucky shot off and popped Simo Häyhä in the jaw with an explosive bullet. Häyhä fell into a coma and was pulled off the field by his comerades. He would finally awake eleven days later, on the same day that the Winter War ended. He would go on to live to the ripe old age of 97.

The Winter War ended as a victory for Finland. The Red Army captured a mere 22,000 square miles of territory and lost close to one million men, more than forty times the number of Finnish casualties. Simo Häyhä received five medals for valour, including the prestigious Kollaa Cross, and was express-promoted from corporal to second lieutenant. Throughout the war, Häyhä raked in a total of 505 confirmed sniper kills (in some sources he is credited with 542). On top of this, he also mowed down two hundred men with a Suomi 9mm submachine gun, bringing his total kill count to over 700 men in under 100 days.

Nobody in history has ever been credited with more confirmed kills than Simo Häyhä. He was an unlikely war hero who used patience, cunning and precision to defend his country, his home, his people and his freedom from communist totalitarian oppression. He was an unstoppable killing machine the likes of which the world has never known before or since.

In keeping with Jer's Nordic theme, the bombing of the Vemork heavy water plant by the Norweigan resistance is a pretty badass story - resulted in the (albeit temporary) derailment of the Nazi nuclear program.

Jer, have a look at: The Beast (Soviet-Afghanistan)and Vukovar and No Man's Land (Ex-Yugoslavia conflict).

Originally Posted by Viva

Jer, have a look at: The Beast (Soviet-Afghanistan)and Vukovar and No Man's Land (Ex-Yugoslavia conflict).

Willdo. Both sound interesting.

Originally Posted by BCtransplant

In keeping with Jer's Nordic theme, the bombing of the Vemork heavy water plant by the Norweigan resistance is a pretty badass story - resulted in the (albeit temporary) derailment of the Nazi nuclear program.

I know there was a film made about that. The name escapes me at the moment.

Originally Posted by JimmyCarter

sneak through the woods with only a day's worth of food...

That a good write-up, but he left out the fact that Simo's "day's worth of food" was a jar of pickled nails. He also left out the part about Simo's method of disguising the vapor of his breath in the -40 winter wateland: he packed snow in his mouth. He layed up motionless in the snow all day in -40 weather WITH A MOUTHFUL OF FUCKING SNOW! Also - every night before Chuck Norris goes to sleep, he checks under his bed to make sure Simo Häyhä isn't under there.

Seriously - even if a totally overblow Rambo Badass Deathmachine movie was made based on Simo Häyhä it would work because he was a real life 5'1" farmer who made all those muscle-bound one-man death squad fictional characters combined look like a complete pussy.

I don't think the over-the-top thing would work very good for Massoud tho. The guy was like Afghan Jesus with an AK-47. One of his bodyguards was a Russian POW who converted to Islam and joined the Muj after meeting Massoud.

Zulu War. Some Rorke's drift shooting gallery

Opium War action. Boxer rebellion.

some of this guys wandering around:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Em...Lettow-Vorbeck

They really should make a movie about Fitzroy Maclean. His autobiography "Eastern Approaches" is absolutely fascinating and nearly unbelievable. Here's a short summary from wiki, but I highly recommend reading the book.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the mid-1930s Fitzroy MacLean was posted to the embassy in Paris. Bored with the pleasant but undemanding routine, he requested a posting to Moscow. The two and a half years he spent in the Soviet Union formed the first third of his best known book, the autobiographical Eastern Approaches. MacLean was in Moscow until late 1939, and so was present during the great Stalinist purges, observing the fates of Bukharin and other Russian revolutionaries. Although he was stationed in the capital, MacLean travelled extensively, primarily by train, into remote regions of the USSR which were off limits to foreigners, and was shadowed by the NKVD as he did so.

When war broke out in 1939 Maclean was prevented from joining the military because of his position as a diplomat. Therefore he resigned from the Diplomatic Service "to go into politics". After tendering his resignation he immediately took a taxi to the nearest recruiting office and enlisted as a Private in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders. He was soon promoted to Lance Corporal and was commissioned in 1941. In that year he became the Conservative MP for Lancaster.

In North Africa in 1942, he distinguished himself in the early actions of the newly formed Special Air Service (SAS), where, with Ralph A. Bagnold, he developed ways of driving vehicles over the Libyan sand "seas". Maclean was a brilliant practitioner in the T. E. Lawrence brand of fighting, and he reported directly to Churchill in Cairo.

Later that year he transferred to the Middle East as part of the Persia and Iraq Command. Amongst his accomplishments was the kidnapping of the German Consul from Axis-controlled Iraq, an incident that soon led Hitler's government to withdraw its support of the military junta in that country[citation needed]. He also arrested Fazlollah Zahedi, the general in charge of the Persian forces in the Isfahan area.

Churchill chose him to lead a liaison mission to central Yugoslavia in 1943. As MacLean wryly put it, his mission was "simply to find out who was killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them to kill more."[2] (See also Yugoslavia and the Allies). At the time of MacLean's deployment to Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito and his partisans were emerging as a major irritant to the German control of the Balkans.

Little was known at the time about Tito: some suspected this was an acronym for a committee or that he might in fact be a young woman. Maclean got to know Tito well, and would later produce two biographies of him. Maclean's relationship with Tito's Partisans was not always easy, partly because they were Communist, while he came from an upper-class Scottish background, and had witnessed Stalinism in action. His biography of Tito reveals the admiration he held for the Yugoslav leader and the Yugoslav Communist-led anti-fascist struggle. He developed a great affection for Yugoslavia and its people and was later given permission to buy a house on the island of Korčula.

He received the Order of Kutuzov (Russia) (which impressed the Soviet troops in Belgrade), and after the war the Croix de Guerre (France), and Order of the Partisan Star (Yugoslavia). He reached the rank of Brigadier during the war, and was promoted to Major-General in 1947.

Originally Posted by Jer

Willdo. Both sound interesting.



I know there was a film made about that. The name escapes me at the moment.

The Heroes of Telemark

Originally Posted by Viva

Jer, have a look at: The Beast (Soviet-Afghanistan)

Officially called "The Beast of War." Good film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094716/

Don't let the fact that it's bty the same guy who eventually made "Waterworld" deter you.

Easily, Lone Survivor

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Lone-Survivor-Eyewitness-Account-Operation/dp/0316067598"]Amazon.com: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 (9780316067591): Marcus Luttrell, Patrick Robinson: Books[/ame]

Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, written with Patrick Robinson. In June of 2005, Luttrell led a four-man team of Navy SEALs into the mountains of Afghanistan on a mission to kill a Taliban leader thought to be allied with Osama bin Laden. On foot, the team encountered two adult men and a teenage boy. A debate broke out as to whether the SEALs should summarily execute the trio to keep them from alerting the Taliban. Luttrell himself was called upon to make the decision. He was torn between considerations of morality and his survival instinct, and he points out that "any government that thinks war is somehow fair and subject to rules like a baseball game probably should not get into one. Because nothing's fair in war, and occasionally the wrong people do get killed."

Luttrell opted to spare the Afghanis' lives. About an hour later, the Taliban launched an attack that claimed nearly a hundred of their own men but also the lives of all the SEALs except Luttrell, who was left wounded.

Not long after that, the Taliban shot down an American rescue helicopter, killing all 16 men on board. Luttrell is sure that the three Afghanis he let go turned around and betrayed the SEALs.

But if nothing is fair in war, neither is anything foreordained. Luttrell was found by other Afghanis, one of whom claimed to be his village's doctor. Once again, Luttrell had to rely on his instincts. "There was something about him," Luttrell writes. "By now I'd seen a whole lot of Taliban warriors, and he looked nothing like any of them. There was no arrogance, no hatred in his eyes." Luttrell trusted the man and his colleagues, who took him back to their village, where the law of hospitality -- "strictly nonnegotiable" -- took hold. "They were committed to defend me against the Taliban," Luttrell writes, "until there was no one left alive."

The law held, and Luttrell survived, returned home and received the Navy Cross for combat heroism from President Bush. The team leader also received the Medal of Honor.



If there was ever a good book written on the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, that'd make a fantastic movie.

A movie about the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Just finishing up reading Hell In A Very Small Place by Bernard Fall. Man, those french and foreign legion paratroopers were hard as fuck!

Originally Posted by rugbydave

A movie about the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Just finishing up reading Hell In A Very Small Place by Bernard Fall. Man, those french and foreign legion paratroopers were hard as fuck!

Not hard enough for the Viet Minh.

Originally Posted by hop

Not hard enough for the Viet Minh.

100,000(49,500 combatants, the rest support staff) vs 13,000(all hands, support staff, nurses, the brothel) is pretty good odds considering the Viet Minh also had artillery superiority and the french high command were more interested in arguing amongst themselves. That being said, epic battle, like 200+days. Brutal loss of life on both sides too. I could see it being a real bad-ass movie...

How about Russian Spetsnaz dealing with the 1985 Beirut embassy hostage situation:

In October 1985, Alfa [Spetsnaz] was dispatched to Beirut, Lebanon, when four Soviet diplomats had been taken hostage by a Sunni militant group. By the time Alfa was onsite, one of the hostages had already been killed. The perpetrators and their relatives were identified by supporting KGB operatives, and the latter were taken hostage. Following the standard policy of 'no negotiation', Alfa proceeded to sever some of their hostages' body parts and sent them to the perpetrators with a warning that more would follow if the Russian hostages were not released immediately. The tactic was a success and no other Russian national was taken hostage in the Middle East for the next 20 years.

Originally Posted by Jer

That a good write-up, but he left out the fact that Simo's "day's worth of food" was a jar of pickled nails. He also left out the part about Simo's method of disguising the vapor of his breath in the -40 winter wateland: he packed snow in his mouth. He layed up motionless in the snow all day in -40 weather WITH A MOUTHFUL OF FUCKING SNOW! Also - every night before Chuck Norris goes to sleep, he checks under his bed to make sure Simo Häyhä isn't under there.

Seriously - even if a totally overblow Rambo Badass Deathmachine movie was made based on Simo Häyhä it would work because he was a real life 5'1" farmer who made all those muscle-bound one-man death squad fictional characters combined look like a complete pussy.

I don't think the over-the-top thing would work very good for Massoud tho. The guy was like Afghan Jesus with an AK-47. One of his bodyguards was a Russian POW who converted to Islam and joined the Muj after meeting Massoud.

Not to mention the fact that Hayha had over 700 confirmed kills, counting unconfirmed its close to 1000 by some counts. And that was all in less than 100 days. Thats basically killing someone on average, ever hour at least. While not giving away your position. I don't think there would be any way to put his story into a decent movie though. Movies are about charecters and great stories and everything, but I just don't see how any of that matters for Simo Hayha's story. It doesn't matter who he was or what his parents thought of him, etc, he was just a farm boy that went and did his job, well.


I think the story of Larry Thorne could make a killer movie. http://modern-war.suite101.com/artic...d_larry_thorne

Originally Posted by rugbydave

That being said, epic battle, like 200+days. Brutal loss of life on both sides too. I could see it being a real bad-ass movie...

Epic? Stupid ass arrogant French general massively underestimates the Vietnamese and commits to a retarded military position. French get their ass handed to them by one of the better generals of modern history - Vo Nguyen Giap - who moved those 100,000 soldiers over fucking brutal terrain and jungle. Carrying artillery up cut jungle tracks?

Besides, it was already made into a movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104105/

Originally Posted by Hugh Conway

Epic? Stupid ass arrogant French general massively underestimates the Vietnamese and commits to a retarded military position. French get their ass handed to them by one of the better generals of modern history - Vo Nguyen Giap - who moved those 100,000 soldiers over fucking brutal terrain and jungle. Carrying artillery up cut jungle tracks?

Besides, it was already made into a movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104105/

I'll have to check that movie out. General Navarre and Cogny's arrogance takes nothing away from the bravery and stubborn defense of the men on the ground...

The Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. No significant film has been made about this month long nightmare engagement between German and American forces because everyone involved wanted to forget it. It started as an attempt to capture dams that controlled rivers running into Holland (it was feared the Nazis would blow them and flood Holland, take out bridges). It was fought in a dense pine forest spread over a maze of low ridges and creeks and was worse than any jungle fighting seen in the Pacific or Vietnam. Similar "jungle-like" terrain but against a foe equipped with tanks and loads of artilery support. The Hurtgen became a pointless meatgrinder and shattered several American divisions before it was bypassed. Since there was no glory here and the stories of its pointless horror were not widely told to civilians, it has never gotten a movie.

Originally Posted by neckdeep

The Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. No significant film has been made about this month long nightmare engagement between German and American forces because everyone involved wanted to forget it. It started as an attempt to capture dams that controlled rivers running into Holland (it was feared the Nazis would blow them and flood Holland, take out bridges). It was fought in a dense pine forest spread over a maze of low ridges and creeks and was worse than any jungle fighting seen in the Pacific or Vietnam. Similar "jungle-like" terrain but against a foe equipped with tanks and loads of artilery support. The Hurtgen became a pointless meatgrinder and shattered several American divisions before it was bypassed. Since there was no glory here and the stories of its pointless horror were not widely told to civilians, it has never gotten a movie.

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Trumpets_Fade[/ame]

I'd like to see a nice big budget movie on Simon Bolivar or Pancho Villa.

Originally Posted by Tippster

Pancho Villa.

Throw in Ambrose Bierce and I'm sold.

The Beast is good.
Heros of Telemark was fun.

How about a decent Korean War movie?