OldArmyCT said:

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Nothing about Vietnam.

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I thought We Were Soldiers was pretty good.

I'm not sure there are any movies that get everything correct because they are movies and if they did they would be boring and unwatchable. There are those that get some things correct.

Generation Kill gets day to day life of an enlisted infantryman pretty correct. There are problems but it gets a lot right.

Greyhound gets life on board a WW2 destroyer during an Atlantic crossing pretty accurate from several Naval experts I know.

Both Band of Brothers and Pacific get it pretty close. They of course follow real life accounts so have a lot of reality to base the series on and Tom Hanks went to pretty extreme lengths to get the little things right.

Just watched "Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan." It is a depiction of the Australian army in Vietnam. It comes the closest I've seen showing the role of field artillery in Vietnam. Based on what I've read about the battle, it is probably as accurate as a movie can come to actual history.

Restrepo (documentary)
The Hornet's Nest (documentary)
Dealin' (documentary about the Battle of Wanat, Afghanistan)
The Outpost (about the Battle of Kamdesh, Afghanistan)
Megan Leavey (pretty accurate portrayal of the bond between Dog handlers and their working dogs)
Danger Close; the Battle of Long Tan
Hell And Back, Again (documentary about Afghanistan and a wounded Sgt's return home after being Medevac'd out of Afghanistan)
Gunner Palace
Thank You For Your Service (a very realistic portrayal of what a lot of service members experience after coming home from combat)
We Were Soldiers
Full Metal Jacket (just the basic training part)

They Shall Not Grow Old. Not the US military, but still accurate…since it's all real footage.

Stripes

HBOs "Generation Kill", gave the best view of an average enlisted persons life. I wasn't in the invasion of Iraq nor was I a marine but the same BS they dealt with and the same stupid and asinine conversations between dudes in the same humvee was pretty spot on. My first deployment was the surge in 2007 and after watching Generstion Kill several years later that very well could have been my platoon and the vehicle I rode in on screen.

Now I can't speak to the accuracy of the invasion or what they saw in combat just the interactions amongst the people.

The first season of Space Force on Netflix is a great depiction of military bureaucracy.

Aggie13B said:

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HBOs "Generation Kill", gave the best view of an average enlisted persons life. I wasn't in the invasion of Iraq nor was I a marine but the same BS they dealt with and the same stupid and asinine conversations between dudes in the same humvee was pretty spot on. My first deployment was the surge in 2007 and after watching Generstion Kill several years later that very well could have been my platoon and the vehicle I rode in on screen.

Now I can't speak to the accuracy of the invasion or what they saw in combat just the interactions amongst the people.

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I had the experience of watching this series and then traveling to the battlefield, much like watching the Gettysburg movie then visiting Gettysburg National Battlefield.

Was at Talil in 2009 and ran the roads (Highway 1/ MSR Tampa ) and Route 8 and 7 (AKA "Ambush Alley") the routes that Task Force Tarawa took through Nasiriya on a daily basis. Traveled the exact route that Jessica Lynch and the 507th Maintenance Company took through the city and met their eventual demise. Also went right by the hospital she was rescued from.

You could easily see the why the Marines took such heavy losses with their LVTP-7s.

Traveled Route 7 north all the way to Al Hay.. exact same route the 1st Recon Marines took in the series.

The series got the scenery about as close as you could get to the actual locations. On Route 7 north to Al Hay it is scrub brush desert similar to the high basins in Colorado and Wyoming with lots of irrigation canals, thus lots of farming. Very unlike the sea of sand south of Nasiriya towards Basra on Tampa.

The banter back in forth in the trucks is spot on with what I witnessed. My experience was not Marines but a Massachusetts National Guard company from Boston with fill-ins from Tennessee and Georgia in Afghanistan. The differences in the dialects alone was hilarious let alone the topics of discussion and "the stupid and asinine conversations". Yep, that statement pretty much nailed it.

Not quite realistic combat action films, but my recs:

The Great Santini. (pretty autobiographical, the novel written by Pat Conroy). It's an emotional story of a Marine pilot and his family, especially his oldest son. I enjoyed it as I was a child of an Air Force father, and I was the father of daughters when I was Air Force. It was also a film that Hank Hill rented at least 18 times :-)

Another film based on a Conroy novel is Lords of Discipline - based on experiences at The Citadel. It's not "military" yet is about life in their Corps. The Citadel was not too happy with this movie.

Twelve O'Clock High. An excellent study in the demands of leadership during a very bloody war. The special effects are from the 1940s.

Sat with my 80 year old father in a hospital waiting room for 12 hours yesterday and discussed this topic...

His recommendations were:

The Blue Max (1966)
Hamburger Hill (1959) Robert Mitcham
Bridges at Toko Ri (1954)
BAT-21 (1988) Note : The movie was made before the actions of the actual hero of the operation who earned the Medal of Honor were declassified. There is no mention of him in the movie.

Just one observation here. I know that some combat veterans have said that there are films that more accurately depict the horrors of combat better than others, e.g. the first 20 or so minutes of "Saving Private Ryan." And that is true as far as it goes. But no movie can give the audience the true experience of combat, since the audience is merely observing the events on the screen, regardless of how horrifying the events are shown, and not facing the real danger of receiving return fire from an enemy doing their best to try to kill you.

My Vietnam vet father was always very partial to Hamburger Hill (1987) in terms of the relationships of the Joes and their disdain of the news media covering the war.

In the Army now.
Reservist that thought they were signing up for 1 weekend a month and 2 weeks a year.
Deployed and given a job they're not trained for.
Somehow actually manage to do job while arguing about who has to be in charge.