Fighting On Film - The War Movie Podcast!

This week we discuss the only Hollywood depiction of the 1983 US Invasion of Grenada - 'Heartbreak Ridge'. Directed, produced and staring Clint Eastwood Heartbreak Ridge follows a US Marine Corps Recon Platoon as they are whipped into shape and thrown into battle. Written by written by James Carabatsos who also wrote Hamburger Hill the film's young cast includes Mario Van Peebles, Vincent Irizarry...

Fix your bayonets, check your canteens and load your Lewis Gun as we follow Gene Hackman's Major Foster deep into the desert. This week we discus 1977's 'March or Die', a film set during the Rif War of the 1920s, which follows a French Foreign Legion company as it tries to defend an ill-fated archaeological expedition. Directed by Dick Richards, the film stars Terrence Hill, Ian Holm and Max Von S...

examples of this might include the Vietnam sequence in Forrest Gump (1994), the Dunkirk scene from Atonement (2007) , and the battle at the bridge in The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (1966). We reached out to our listeners via social media for their examples of war in non-war movies and collected over 100 responses! We discus many of these and some of our personal favourites. Follow us on Twitter  @Fig...

This week we discuss the under appreciated John Irvin film, ' Hamburger Hill '. The film charts the experiences of a platoon of the 101st Airborne as they attempt to take Hill 937 in May of 1969. Written by Vietnam veteran James Carabatsos and starring Dylan McDermott, Don Cheadle, Courtney B. Vance, Michael Boatman and Steven Weber. The film was released in the wake of ' Platoon ' and ' Full Meta...

Pull on your respirators, load your MAC-10s and join us for Who Dares Wins (1982). An 80s British Cold War action movie starring Lewis Collins, Judy Davis, Richard Widmark and Edward Woodward. An undercover SAS officer is all that stands between a terrorist group and the murder of high-ranking hostages. Directed by Ian Sharp and produced by Euan Lloyd of Wild Geese and Sea Wolves fame, Who Dares W...

We round out ANZAC Month with a look at 2006's Kokoda which follows an Australian patrol lost behind enemy lines during the chaos of the fighting along the Kokoda Trail in 1942. We're joined by special guest historian Robert Lyman , author of A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain: 1941–45 . Directed and co-written by Alister Grierson and with brilliant cinematography from Jules O'Loughli...

This week as we continue Fighting On Film’s ANZAC Month we are lucky enough to be joined by Gavin Mortimer who has just published his latest book 'Z Special Unit' so who better to discuss 1982's 'Attack Force Z' , Starring Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, John Phillip Law and Koo Chaun Hsiung. The film follows an ill-fated mission by a Z Special Unit attempting to rescue the passengers of a downed aircraft....

Fighting On Film's ANZAC Month continues with 1944's ' The Rats of Tobruk ', directed by Charles Chauvel. The film tells the story of the siege of Tobruk and follows three Australian soldiers from Australia to North Africa to New Guinea. The film stars Grant Taylor, Peter Finch, Chips Rafferty, George Wallace, Pauline Garrick and Mary Gay. Strong on spectacle the film struggles to flow, despite th...

This week we continue ANZAC Month with a look at a beautifully shot epic which tells the story of the Australian Light Horse and their charge at the Battle of Beersheba. 1987's The Lighthorsemen features a strong Australian cast including Jon Black, Peter Phelps, John Walton, Tim McKenzie, Tony Bonner, Sigrid Thornton and Anthony Andrews. Directed by Simon Wincer and with cinematography by Dean Se...

This week we begin ANZAC month exploring some of Australia's war movies with a look at Australia's first Vietnam War movie, 1979's The Odd Angry Shot. The story follows an Australian SAS squad during a tour of duty in Vietnam. Written and directed by Tom Jeffery, the film is based on a novella by William Nagle, an Australian Army Vietnam veteran. The film stars Graham Kennedy, John Hargreaves, Joh...

This week we examine The Eight Hundred a recent Chinese spectacular which tackles the the defence of Sihang Warehouse, during the battle of Shanghai in 1937. Directed by Guan Hu and starring Huang Zhizhong, Oho Ou, Jiang Wu, Zhang Yi, Wang Qianyuan, Du Chun, Vision Wei, Li Chen, Yu Haoming, Tang Yixin, and Zheng Kai. While their are strong performances they're largely lost in the edit and the film...

This week we had the opportunity to travel down to the Tank Museum in Bovington for their Fury Experience - a day of fascinating lectures, discussions and a chance to get an up-close look at Fury - the Sherman tank which appeared in the 2014 film ' Fury '. We chat to curator David Willey as well as one of Fury's drivers about their experiences working on the film! Find out more about the Tank Muse...

This week we're joined by Marcus Hearn, the Head of Library and Archive at Hammer Films, joined us to discuss one of the most interesting British war films of the 1950s. Yesterday's Enemy , directed by Val Guest, had a strong cast including Stanley Baker, Guy Rolfe, Leo McKern, Gordon Jackson and Philip Ahn. The film is set in the Burma Campaign and tells a morally ambiguous story of British and J...

In 1989 at the height of a flurry of Vietnam War films an interesting new take on the sub-genre came in the form of 84 Charlie MoPic , which used a found footage, first person technique to follow a fateful long range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP). Written and directed by a Vietnam veteran Patrick Sheane Duncan, it has a small but capable cast including Jonathan Emerson, Nicholas Cascone, Jason Toml...

This week we examine a First World War film with a difference, The King's Man , a prequel to the successful Kingsman franchise. The film explores the founding of a high-minded intelligence agency against the backdrop of the Great War. Weaving in real historical events as plot points we follow the protagonists as they foil a plot to control Europe. Directed by Matthew Vaughn the film boasts a stell...

This week we follow a British sonic deception unit on a doomed patrol through the Malayan jungle. Richard Todd, Laurence Harvey and Richard Harris clash as morale crumbles and questions arise over what to do with a captured Japanese prisoner. We're joined by the brilliant historian Robert Lyman to discuss what the film gets right and wrong. Load up your mules, straighten your webbing, adjust your...

This week we have a very special episode where we tap into a topic close to Matt's heart, the PIAT. Matt wrote a book about the PIAT, or Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank , in 2020 and continues to research its history. One of the most interesting aspects of the PIAT is its unique cultural history, having been portrayed in a plethora of films spanning over 70 years. Most famously it was heralded, lit...

This week we take a look at the Dick Powell-directed naval thriller The Enemy Below . Starring Robert Mitchum as the commander of a destroyer hunting Curt Jürgens' U-Boat during a cat and mouse battle. Tension ramps as the captain pit their wits against one another. Based on the 1956 novel by Denys Rayner, a Royal Navy veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic, The Enemy Below is an engaging classic o...

This week we take to the jungles of Vietnam as Burt Lancaster commands an embattled MAAG unit advising their South Vietnamese allies. Set in 1964, and based on war correspondent Daniel Ford's novel Incident at Muc Wa . Go Tell The Spartans offers an interesting look at an early period of the Vietnam War that we don't often get to see. Directed by Ted Post and staring Craig Wasson, Jonathan Goldsmi...

This week we examine Netflix's latest war film - Munich: Edge of War, starring Jeremy Irons, George MacKay and Jannis Niewöhner. Directed by Christian Schwochow and based on a bestseller from Robert Harris, Munich follows a German diplomat's desperate attempts to unmask Hitler and his plans during the 1938 Munich Conference. We were lucky enough to be joined by Wesley Livesay, host of the History...

This week we're back in the desert of North Africa with a forgotten gem from Ealing Studios. 1943's Nine Men follows a lost section of British infantry, commanded by Jack Lambert, as they're besieged by attacking Italian infantry. Directed by Harry Watt Nine Men is a gripping and surprisingly visceral film which fans of The Way Ahead and Sahara will love. Follow us on Twitter  @FightingOnFilm  and...

Set the mainsail and sharpen your cutlasses, this week we're taking on a technicolour swashbuckler set during the Napoleonic Wars. Starring Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo, Raoul Walsh's 1951 adaptation of some of C.S. Forester's classic seafaring novels is stirring stuff! Join us as we unpack this early adaptation of three of Forester's renowned Horatio Hornblower books. Follow us on Twitter  @Fig...

Join us as we clamber aboard our trucks and ready the Vickers Guns as we prepare for a raid behind enemy lines with 1958's 'Sea of Sand'. A classic British war film with a solid cast including Richard Attenborough, John Gregson, Michael Craig, Percy Herbert and Barry Foster. Guy Green directs this fictionalised depiction of a Long Range Desert Group raid ahead of the Second Battle of El Alamein. ...

Join us for the sixth edition of our Show & Tell  series were we discuss films and programs we've been watching recently. In this edition we talk about 2001's Pearl Harbour (sure to feature in a full length episode in the future) and Spearhead (1978-81) a British TV show following the fictional Wessex Rangers in Northern Ireland and West Germany. Follow us on Twitter  @FightingOnFilm  and on  Face...

Tasked with stopping a group of high ranking Germans setting up a 4th Reich the Dirty Dozen jump into action, one last time. This week we round out Dirty Dozen December with the last of the franchise's films, 1988's ' Fatal Mission '. With much of the production crew, including director Lee H. Katzin. Telly Savalas returns as Major Wright but a number of other characters from the previous film are...