Post-Vietnam films

The effects of the Vietnam War tended to diminish the appetite for fictional war films by the turn of the 1970s. American war films produced during and just after the Vietnam War often reflected the disillusion of the American public towards the war. Most films made after the Vietnam War delved more deeply into the horrors of war than movies made before it. (This is not to say that there were no such films before the Vietnam War; Paths of Glory is a notable critique of war from 1957, the beginning of the Vietnam War era.) Later war films like Catch-22 (set in WWII) and the black comedy MASH (set in Korea), reflected some of these attitudes. One of the later films of what can be called the pre-Vietnam style is The Green Berets.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, the American industry produced war films critical of American involvement in Vietnam, including Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Hamburger Hill, Full Metal Jacket and Casualties of War.

The success of Steven Spielberg's visceral Saving Private Ryan in 1998, helped to usher in a revival of interest in World War II films. A number of these, such as Pearl Harbor, Enemy at the Gates and The Thin Red Line were aimed fairly squarely at the blockbuster market, while others, like Enigma, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Charlotte Gray were more nostalgic in tone.