Best naval battle in a movie

[celedhring]

So you can talk about Master & Commander at your heart's content.

I'm including XXth century wars in this one, because I couldn't come up with that many great examples. Let's define "naval battle" as having naval vessels on each side deploying armament or other assets to attempt to sink or seize control of each other. So stuff like Pearl Harbor is in (because the target was the Pacific fleet), D-Day is out (ships only on one side).

I admit ship movies are a bit of a blind spot for me outside of the famous ones, so I'm probably missing many good examples and I probably have way too many submarine movies. However, I *refuse* to list Bay's Pearl Harbor or Emmerich's Midway.

My votes are for Master & Commander (duh), Das Boot (duh), and Captain Blood - namely for being one of my favorite pirate movies as a kid. I just rewatched the scene and it still rocks in that Old Hollywood swashbuckling way. Although I should probably vote Cruel Sea as my third because it's amazing.

[Barrister]

So I've already gushed all over Master and Commander.

Tora Tora Tora! is pretty great.

Red October and  Das Boot are also good, although I haven't seen either in awhile (yes, curiously, I think I saw Tora Tora Tora! more recently).

No love for The Final Countdown? :p

[Tonitrus]

No "The Enemy Below"? 

[Tonitrus]

No love for The Final Countdown? :p

The only battle in that film was purely an air battle.   

Maybe "best battle that never was"...  But I also expect it would not have been very dramatic if it happened though.

[Syt]

Was puzzling for a sec about POTC. "Pacific ... Operations ... Theater ... what??" 

[Syt]

Also, I feel The Enemy Below deserves a mention: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050356/

(Not to mention it inspied one of the best Star Trek TOS episodes.)

[Syt]

No "The Enemy Below"? 

 

I gave my third vote to Ben Hur. It's maybe not the most realistic of the list, but it's epic, tense, and offering a pretty unique view point from the rowing decks.

[celedhring]

The Enemy Below got discarded because I thought I had way too many submarine movies.

Also, the only guy I know that has served in the Navy always said that "Mister Roberts" is his favorite movie depicting life in the Navy. But I have never seen it.

[Threviel]

Greyhound had a lot of good stuff.

[Sophie Scholl]

Goonies v. Fratellis (The Goonies) 



 

[Sheilbh]

I'd add some other British war films like In Which We Serve, written by and starring Noel Coward, and The Battle of the River Plate, Powell and Pressburger and (for some baffling reason) loads of real warships.

Both also fairly strong on sympathetic good Germans - as you'd expect. 

Love The Cruel Sea though.

[celedhring]

One of the things that surprises me is that we never got a "big" movie about Trafalgar. I feel like somebody would have done it during the 1960s-1970s, when we seemingly got the entire history of the British Empire dumped into movie form 

[Sheilbh]

Only the cheap bits of the British Empire's history

"Can we plausibly do this on one set built in Surrey? Is Peter Cushing available?"

[Syt]

Only the cheap bits of the British Empire's history

"Can we plausibly do this on one set built in Surrey? Is Peter Cushing available?"

Incidentally, the British Film Institute created a top ten list:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-great-battle-sea-films

(Only one film from the 70s, though, Tora! Tora! Tora! )

[celedhring]

Only the cheap bits of the British Empire's history

"Can we plausibly do this on one set built in Surrey? Is Peter Cushing available?"

Incidentally, the British Film Institute created a top ten list:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-great-battle-sea-films

(Only one film from the 70s, though, Tora! Tora! Tora! )

That silent film about the campaign against Von Spee seems like something I need to see.