The Greatest War Movies Ever Made, According to a Retired General

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome back to Bullwork Takes.

0:02 I am Sunonny Bunch.

0:03 I'm culture editor at the Bullwork.

0:04 Uh I'm very pleased to be joined today by Mark Hurtling.

0:07 Uh because we are going to be talking about

0:09 a subject that's near and dear to my heart,

0:10 war movies, but a subject that Mark has a lot of experience with.

0:14 Uh obviously a lot of I'm not even

0:16 I'm not going to everybody knows your CV here,

0:18 so I'm not going to waste their time and bore them with that.

0:21 Um but I'm really excited to talk about this because a I've

0:24 wanted to pick your brain on this topic for a while.

0:26 This is this is going to be a fun episode for me.

0:28 But also uh because I feel like there are some lessons here that we

0:31 can learn uh in in the culture more broadly, but also, you know,

0:34 maybe maybe the folks in the White House if they stumble across this video,

0:37 if it shows up in their uh YouTube algorithm,

0:40 they could they could take away a few things, too.

0:42 We'll see.

0:43 I don't know.

0:43 Mark, thanks for talking to me today.

0:45 Hey, this is great, Sunny.

0:46 And thanks for opening it up with culture.

0:48 I'll I'll insert one thing that was you just brought up.

0:51 You know, in the military, they tell us that we have to learn

0:53 leadership through a through a three-legged stool.

0:56 The one leg is what you learn in the schoolhouse.

0:59 The next leg is what you

1:01 learn through experiences in your operational assignment.

1:04 And the third leg is what you learn from self-study.

1:07 And I consider watching war movies and reading books a self-study.

1:11 I kind of put together a list and we'll see what you think about it.

1:14 I refuse to judge your list.

1:15 I won't do it, but I am excited to see it.

1:17 So, we've got a top 10.

1:18 Technically, it's a top 12.

1:20 And I can we maybe we could discuss, you know, titling conventions here.

1:24 Uh, you know, numbering conventions here with these ties, but that that's okay.

1:28 That's 12 is 12 is good.

1:30 Um, so starting, we're going to start at 10 and work work our way down to one.

1:33 Uh, number 10 on your list, uh, because you always start at the 10,

1:36 you go down to the one, is Gettysburg.

1:38 Gettysburg, which is a classic Civil War film.

1:42 It is Ted Turner wrote did this film, you know,

1:45 wanted to give an homage to the Battle of Gettysburg.

1:48 Uh it has a great historical fiction based

1:51 on the book by Michael Shara, a killer angels.

1:54 And it's an excellent portrayal of the effects of personalities in war,

1:59 how dynamic personalities interact,

2:02 how they can cause great friction or how they can either win

2:05 a battle or lose a battle depending on which side you're on.

2:09 So it it's it's really some it has some great lessons about how

2:13 personalities interact even though it's based

2:16 on a historical fiction by Michael Shara.

2:18 Let's get more specific here.

2:19 So when when we're talking about the personalities

2:21 that helped win or lose a war, what what's something in the film that folks

2:25 should focus on if they're watching it?

2:27 Say like, "Oh, this is a good example

2:29 of how uh Lee kind of collapsed on the battlefield."

2:33 Well, the the Gettysburg campaign was an invasion of the North.

2:37 Lee persuaded Jefferson Davis that he could do it and it would take

2:41 the war to the north and cause them a great deal of pain.

2:44 And part of that was due to cognitive dissonance.

2:47 He really thought uh the will of his army

2:50 could overcome the material of the Union army and put them in disfavor while

2:55 at the same time taking resources away from the north,

2:58 the food, uh the cattle, the horses,

3:01 the cannons that he was going to scound with when he went into Pennsylvania.

3:06 So on the other side, you had a brand new commander, uh,

3:10 a guy who had replaced the former general of the Union Army,

3:13 a guy named me, and he was just starting to get his act together.

3:17 The resources were good on the north, much greater than they were in the south,

3:21 but the personalities were coming together.

3:24 There were some personality disconnects, some toxic leaders,

3:28 some communication problems on both sides.

3:31 But because of Lee being as adamant as he was and changing

3:36 what he was doing constantly in the battle on the campaign plan,

3:41 it caused disaster for the South and it started, you know,

3:45 the the the road to ruin for the southern armies.

3:48 Next up, tied for ninth, uh you've got Patton and a bridge too far.

3:52 Patton is one of my favorite uh war films.

3:55 It's written by Francis Ford Copala.

3:57 Um of course it stars George C.

3:59 Scott as uh General Patton himself.

4:01 Why do you have this one on the list?

4:04 Well, the the two of them talk about campaign

4:06 planning uh which is what's something the military does.

4:09 You know, the military doesn't determine strategy.

4:12 They take the strategy and then turn it into operational and tactical plans.

4:17 So, in both of these movies, there's some interesting dynamics.

4:22 uh in Patton the lesson is all about the presence

4:26 and influence of a commanding general and how uh

4:30 he was overcome to a degree and sometimes during

4:34 a career that caused great problems by his superersized ego.

4:38 You know, Patton had the ego the size of the state

4:40 of Texas and sometimes that got him in trouble.

4:44 He was always too demanding.

4:46 He didn't quite understand his troops.

4:49 Although he's seen as a guy that was a terrific commander,

4:53 but if you look deeper into Patton's history,

4:56 not just these battles in North Africa and Europe,

4:59 but going back to the time when he was a colonel and a lieutenant colonel,

5:03 Patton was not a very nice guy.

5:05 I mean, he led the attack on the bonus marchers in Lafayette Park

5:08 and on the mall in DC in the 1930s and just basically uh beat the guys,

5:15 his cavalry unit, the third cavalry uh regiment,

5:19 beat the guys on the National Mall who were just there

5:22 trying to get pay from their service in World War I.

5:25 So, anybody that watches the movie Patton has to go

5:28 beyond that personality to understand who Patton truly was.

5:33 Uh the the movie that was tied for ninth in my view was a terrific

5:38 movie called A Bridge too far and it was all about Operation Market Garden.

5:43 Also in World War II uh Montgomery's plan to go north and seize

5:47 some of the bridges and ports in the low countries uh of Holland.

5:52 There was an over optimism on planning.

5:55 The campaign plan was extremely optimistic.

5:58 it didn't mitigate the risk in terms of getting people

6:02 to different locations and because of that there was strategic failure.

6:07 So you know this movie talks about

6:09 tactical sacrifices of units versus questionable strategic outcomes.

6:15 So you can have a great army doing

6:18 wonderful things under great tactical and operational uh leadership

6:22 but if the strategic plan is not nailed down

6:26 and if you haven't kind of mitigated the risk.

6:30 Uh you're placing a whole lot of burden

6:33 on those who serve for an endstate that doesn't come about.

6:37 Yeah.

6:37 A bridge too far is an interesting one.

6:39 So this comes out in 1977 uh in it is

6:43 it's written by William Goldman who of course wrote Marathon Man,

6:47 you know, The Princess Bride.

6:48 He's written a number of classic movies, etc., etc.

6:51 Um but it's interesting again comes out in 1977,

6:53 so it's it's a few years uh after Vietnam.

6:56 There's this kind of downer sense.

7:00 It definitely it definitely hits this mood of like maybe we can't do everything.

7:04 Maybe maybe we actually can't do everything we want to do out there,

7:09 which is which is uh unusual for a big war movie like this.

7:14 They usually have slightly slightly happier outcomes.

7:17 You put your finger on something really interesting because it was it did

7:21 come out right after the the Vietnam after we ended the war in Vietnam.

7:25 It also pointed to uh sometimes you don't listen to the senior generals.

7:30 Sometimes the politicians should question them and in this case it

7:33 was Churchill and and uh Eisenhower who really allowed this operation

7:39 to to take place and it was flawed primarily because they wanted

7:44 to assuage Montgomery in his plan for going into the low countries.

7:49 So again, the leadership aspect of this is fascinating uh

7:53 in the a very complex environment that requires a lot of the both

7:59 the airborne and the tank troops uh that were trying

8:02 to seize these bridges and get up to where the ports were.

8:05 Number eight on your list is Restrepo,

8:08 which is a documentary about the war in Afghanistan.

8:11 Uh this came out in I believe 2010.

8:14 It was co-directed by Sebastian Younger who's a American journalist

8:18 with a British photojournalist by the name of Tim Heather Heatherington.

8:23 Why is Restrepo on the list and what what should we take away from it?

8:27 It was a war of my generation and I

8:30 knew a lot of people that were fighting there.

8:32 So in watching Restreo in 2010,

8:35 I was anticipating that it was not going to be realistic.

8:39 In fact, it was exceedingly realistic from just

8:42 the raw humanity of what the soldiers do,

8:45 the trust they build within their small unit teams,

8:49 uh, small unit adaptation to a mission that's really

8:53 tough in a in a very difficult complex environment.

8:57 um peer leadership uh the the ability of young soldiers to step up

9:03 at the tactical realm and also their ability

9:07 to share hardship in really tough conditions.

9:11 Uh but in in this particular movie they

9:15 showed the soldiers of this unit having constant contact.

9:19 They were always in combat.

9:21 They were always in battle.

9:23 There was clear mastery of the tactics by this unit,

9:28 but again there was an unclear strategic purpose.

9:32 So if you talk about the heroism

9:34 of young soldiers and military personnel doing their job,

9:38 Restrepo is a perfect example.

9:41 But then you also get to the point of so what?

9:45 uh if the strategy is bad, if they've put it been put in a context where

9:49 it's very difficult for their tactical actions to control the battlefield,

9:55 then you're going to have failure.

9:56 And in fact, that's what happened uh at the end state of the movie

10:00 because while the trust at the squad level is the foundation for tough fights,

10:06 uh those squad level personnel depend on the higherups

10:09 to make sure that they're doing the right thing.

10:11 We're going to have another uh war on terror error film here in in one second,

10:16 the next one as a matter of fact.

10:18 But I I'm just curious what your take on is what

10:20 your take of generally speaking the films that have come out

10:24 of these conflicts have been like have the films been true

10:28 true to life accurate what or what what have they been lacking?

10:32 I'd say a percentage of the ones that have come

10:34 out of Iraq and Afghanistan have been true to life.

10:37 They've represented the soldiers well.

10:39 They've done a very good job of showing capabilities

10:43 and and the the leadership at the small unit

10:47 level as being excellent much like I would say

10:50 of most of the movies in V about Vietnam.

10:53 Uh but it also paints the picture that you know you can win

10:57 every battle but if you don't have a strategic vision and a strategic objective

11:02 from the political side and and the grand

11:05 strategy from the the senior officers within

11:09 a military you're going to have problems and you're not going to win a war.

11:13 And that's one of the things that I think was most interesting about Restrepo.

11:17 And it was also like you said, Sebastian Younger was the one that put

11:21 this together based on his writings and he

11:24 saw the dedication and the sacrifice

11:26 of the young soldiers and yet he still questioned

11:30 the overall uh objective of the war

11:34 in Afghanistan after uh certain time frames were

11:37 passed and what the senior generals were saying

11:40 about what they could and could not do.

11:42 So, uh, let's go to to the next entry on, uh,

11:46 your list here, which is Zero Dark 30 at number seven.

11:49 Now, Zero Dark 30 is a little bit unusual compared to some of the other films

11:53 in this list because technically it's about a CIA

11:56 agent and the the efforts of the intelligence apparatus here,

12:01 but it highlights something uh, very key about the role intelligence um,

12:07 assimilation plays uh, for the modern military.

12:10 Right.

12:11 Yeah.

12:11 And that's why I picked it, Sunny.

12:13 This this particular movie is one of my favorites.

12:16 It's not truly a war movie, if you put it that way,

12:19 but it's actually a film that really shows how the US

12:25 military today uses intelbased operation

12:29 to conduct their campaigns and their battles.

12:32 Uh, and in this case, it's the story of Maya, who has a a CIA agent who has just

12:40 relentless focus on driving the objective of finding Bin Laden.

12:45 And, you know, she makes a lot of mistakes.

12:48 The CIA makes a lot of mistakes.

12:50 They're they're learning about the culture of Afghanistan,

12:53 the culture of al Qaeda as they were fighting them.

12:57 But, you know, the the biggest thing I see in this is how long it took them

13:03 to collect the intelligence for this one critically important

13:08 target that so many operations were basing their action on.

13:12 Um, and and it really gets to the point of how institutional endurance sometime

13:18 in combat and sometimes not even tactical

13:21 success will bring completion to an operation.

13:25 So this this is my homage to the intel community.

13:29 Uh having seen them in combat and used them in combat so many times in Iraq,

13:35 uh understanding how much they play a part in the kind of daily

13:39 operations we do uh anytime we send men and women to war.

13:45 It's a fascinating movie.

13:46 It's one of my favorite films just generally speaking of the 2010s.

13:49 I think director Katherine Bigalow um and screenwriter Mark Bold do a great

13:53 job of uh depicting a long drawn out conflict that is kind of open-ended.

14:00 And it was actually it's funny they when they started shooting the movie,

14:04 the script ended before uh before Osama bin Laden was killed

14:09 in that in the raid because they they that's just they the script was done.

14:14 They started shooting it.

14:15 He hadn't been he hadn't been killed yet.

14:17 Um, so they they ended up having to kind of reshoot the end uh afterward,

14:22 which I that that it it it it's something to think about because that is

14:26 a very different movie if it ends

14:28 without the acco the the objective being accomplished.

14:32 It it comes almost a little more nihilistic.

14:36 Yeah.

14:36 You know, and the other thing that I think was interesting in this uh

14:39 because I know some of the people that were portrayed in this movie,

14:42 especially uh Admiral Bill McRaven as the head

14:46 of the special operations command uh as he retired,

14:50 but he was relentless as was Stan Mcristel in terms

14:54 of finding ways to get after uh the terrorist cells, especially Bin Laden.

14:59 Um, the thing that I found interesting and what I experienced in combat

15:04 was the extremely close relationship between

15:08 the intelligence agencies and the military forces.

15:12 uh you know when I was in Iraq both Stan

15:14 Mcristel and Bill McRaven were there as the uh the Jac

15:18 commanders and we worked very closely together in multinational division

15:22 north in the northern part of Iraq during the surge

15:25 where they would put together the intelligence that they would

15:29 fuse from captured prisoners from things on the street from reflections

15:34 through satellites and overhead imagery through signals intelligence and they

15:39 use the intelligence agencies as well as their own military intelligence,

15:44 the DIA, and also intel troops on the ground to really

15:49 drive to the point where they were breaking up networks and cells.

15:54 And that's something we haven't seen in previous wars.

15:58 There's always been an intelligence community and a military community,

16:02 but I think both Bill McRaven and Stan Mcristel fuse

16:05 those together uh in this very unique kind of conflict.

16:10 We're gonna uh go to to an earlier uh conflict now with Courage Under Fire.

16:15 Uh coming in at um number six on your list, Courage Under Fire,

16:19 directed by Ed Zwick,

16:20 who is kind of known for making really good highquality message movies.

16:26 Um which kind of ties into what we're we're talking about here.

16:30 when you're when you're watching uh Courage Under Fire,

16:32 what is your takeaway of uh the the difficulties

16:37 that come with, for lack of a better word,

16:40 friendly fire, uh you know, uh things that happen,

16:44 think accidental deaths of your of your own men

16:46 by your own hand in the in a in a conflict.

16:49 And Sunny, that's why I chose this movie.

16:51 This this one haunts me to be honest with you.

16:54 it.

16:54 Most people won't choose this as one of the better war movies of its time,

16:59 but it was written after Desert Storm

17:02 and there were several instances of Fratricside,

17:04 green on green, blue on green, uh implications there.

17:09 Uh but I I really drove it home because as a cavalry guy myself,

17:14 as a as a tanker, uh I understand the implications of being inside of that tank,

17:20 much like Denzel Washington portrayed and how

17:23 your visibility and your situational awareness is

17:26 really tough and the training of tankers

17:29 and armored crewmen is just it it's excellent.

17:32 But even with that, when you're inside that 70

17:36 ton M1 A1 and you have those very small vision

17:39 blocks that you're looking out of and trying to engage

17:42 the enemy while you have this armor protection around you,

17:46 it's always difficult.

17:47 That's the first thing.

17:49 The second thing in my view was just the the different

17:54 views of the battlefield and how war stories are told.

17:59 You know, this is a movie truly where you have three different character,

18:02 Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan, and a third character that was

18:07 an an observer uh watching uh action from different

18:13 perspectives with all of their own egos being

18:16 applied and they all saw the action differently.

18:20 uh having had when I was last in Iraq in 2007,

18:25 we actually had a fratricside incident where an American soldier

18:29 shot another American soldier because of a loss of situational awareness.

18:33 And I had to talk to that soldier's father and tell them what h the one

18:37 that was killed and tell him why he was

18:40 killed uh and and how it was extremely unfortunate.

18:45 But things like this happen in war and the combination of confusion, uh,

18:53 fratricside events and moral injuries in one battle that is portrayed time

19:00 and time again through different perspectives and lenses in Courage Under Fire.

19:05 I thought was just a fascinating approach to a war movie.

19:08 That is I that's fascinating and that must have been uh gut-wrenching

19:13 um for I can't even imagine can't can't even imagine you know I

19:17 I I deal with uh hanging hanging commas and the such that that's

19:22 the hardest thing of my job is just a what a nightmare.

19:25 Um the the other the other thing that's

19:28 interesting about courage under fire is that there there

19:30 there's almost a fourth perspective here which is

19:32 the perspective of the folks in the White House who

19:36 just want this to go away that who just want this to like end and be over which

19:41 is another thing that you know winds up playing

19:44 into some of these stories and these narratives right?

19:47 Yeah it sure does and you know we

19:49 can point to real life events across the board.

19:53 Uh I happen to be my one tour

19:55 in the Pentagon was during the time when Pat Tilman was

19:58 killed and I watched from close in how that was

20:03 addressed by senior military and civilian leadership and it

20:07 was not comforting uh the way some of the civilian

20:10 leaders wanted to portray that when we had

20:13 senior military leaders no we can't use this soldier's

20:17 death in a fratricside uh for these kinds of purposes.

20:20 So again, this is the dynamic of conflict when you're in a democratic society

20:26 and you have both civilian and military

20:28 leaders looking at things from very different lenses.

20:32 All right.

20:32 Uh moving moving on, we have another tie on the list here.

20:36 Um at number five, Blackhawk Down and We Were Soldiers.

20:40 Uh, Blackhawk Down, of course, directed by Ridley Scott,

20:43 one of the great one of my top films,

20:47 not military, not you know, war films, films of the 2000s.

20:51 Just an amazing um and occasionally infuriating uh film.

20:56 Uh, and and We Were Soldiers starring Mel Gibson.

20:59 Um, set in uh that was it's Vietnam, right?

21:02 That's that's Vietnam.

21:03 Um, I uh God, I haven't seen We Were Soldiers in forever.

21:07 I need to I need to rewatch that one.

21:08 Why are these on the list?

21:10 The reason I combine them because they have the same kind of lessons.

21:15 Uh Blackhawk Down obviously in Moadishu was a rural environment.

21:19 Uh one of the first times that that soldiers in mass were

21:23 placed in a situation a a group of rangers and some aviators

21:27 that were unfortunately brought into a situation where one of their helicopters

21:32 was set down and or shot down and there was a rescue mission.

21:36 And we were soldiers once came from the book uh by Hal Moore.

21:40 We were soldiers once in Young talking about

21:42 the first real battle of uh the Vietnam War,

21:46 the Adriang campaign uh where a a mass of cavalry troopers were inserted

21:53 by air assault into a uh what they thought was a safe landing zone.

21:58 turned out to be right in the middle

22:00 of a large Vietkong Vietnamese area basically that was all underground.

22:06 And in both of these situations,

22:08 what you have is a plan for a tactical execution

22:13 of an operation which comes unglued because of degraded condition.

22:18 You have massive direct and unexpected fire from multiple directions uh

22:24 on the soldiers that are on the ground

22:26 after having been inserted by helicopters.

22:30 you see just unbelievable courage and commitment uh you know based

22:36 on the the medevac helicopters that were coming in in both

22:41 instances in Yadrang and also in Mogadishu to try and rescue

22:45 those who had been downed on the ground and couldn't get out.

22:49 Uh you have in u in Blackhawk Down you have urban chaos.

22:55 uh you're right in the middle of a very

22:56 large city where you don't know where the enemy is.

23:00 In uh we were soldiers,

23:01 you have Vietkong literally pouring out of underground tunnels

23:06 from a mountain attacking these soldiers who had just been inserted.

23:10 And you know what what my lesson is from this is

23:15 that in both situations both in in Moadishu and in the Adrang you

23:20 had highly competent well-trained soldiers being put into a chaotic situation

23:28 and in both cases the leaders the tactical leaders uh pulled them through.

23:34 Uh it it is a uh when you take a look at the ends, ways, and means of combat,

23:41 uh let's in this case eliminate the ends

23:44 and just talk about the ways you maneuver and the means you have to bring fire

23:50 upon an enemy when you're in a chaotic environment.

23:53 Uh it's it's just masterful the way the unit leadership in both these cases

24:01 uh adapted to the situation and pulled their forces out of a crisis event.

24:07 Blackhawk Down, one of my one of my absolute favorites.

24:10 Uh and it's a great I don't know what your home

24:11 video setup is like uh at at your house, Mark,

24:14 but if you have a 4K Blu-ray player,

24:16 the the Blackhawk Down is a uh is a reference grade 4K disc.

24:21 It's a it's it's a must own just for the image quality and sound quality alone,

24:25 let alone this the story.

24:26 Uh which again I think is is great.

24:29 Um

24:30 and the cinematography is magnificent in both of those movies actually.

24:34 Yeah.

24:35 I I just want to highlight one one quick thing

24:37 which is the the sense of brotherhood uh and and spre

24:42 and and just the the way these guys fight for each

24:45 other more than any you know mission objective or or whatever.

24:50 the uh there's there's just a great quote from Hoot that he's

24:53 played by Eric Banner in the film that that lives in my head.

24:56 When I go home, people will ask me, "Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man?

25:00 What are you, some kind of war junkie?" You know what I'll say?

25:02 I won't say a goddamn word.

25:04 Why?

25:05 They won't understand.

25:06 They won't understand why we do it.

25:07 They won't understand that it's about the men next to you.

25:10 And that's it.

25:10 That's all it is.

25:12 That is not a unique sentiment to this film,

25:14 but it is it is shown in every frame of the movie.

25:17 Every frame of the movie is about that idea.

25:21 Yeah.

25:21 Hey, can I say one more thing?

25:23 You know, since you mentioned that about Blackhawk Down,

25:25 I'll I'll say one more thing about We Were Soldiers.

25:28 That's one of the great movies in terms of showing

25:32 the home front too that while the battle was ongoing.

25:36 Uh Hal Moore's wife Hal Moore being a battalion commander,

25:40 Lieutenant Colonel, his wife was back at Fort Benning or yeah,

25:44 Fort Benning I think it was uh going

25:47 or at least it was filmed at Fort Benning going around

25:49 to the different houses telling soldiers uh family members

25:54 who were killed uh that their soldier had been down.

25:57 And that that also rings true with me

26:00 uh from different standpoints of my career,

26:02 watching spouses of soldiers who were deployed,

26:07 making sure they're taking care of the family

26:09 members who lose their soldier in battle, too.

26:12 And that that's really an emotional moment

26:14 for me as well when I watch that film.

26:18 Yeah.

26:18 Yeah.

26:19 That's it's tough.

26:19 That is tough.

26:20 We're on to number uh number four on your list.

26:23 And this is this is the only movie

26:25 that you sent over that I have actually not seen.

26:27 It's 1949's 12:00 high uh starring Gregory Peek.

26:32 Uh it is it is in the National Film Registry.

26:36 Uh this is it was selected there in 1998 I believe directed by Henry King.

26:40 Won a couple of Oscars.

26:41 You highlighted this because of what it can teach folks about leadership,

26:45 which I think is a a great under underrated

26:48 lesson that more people could use in their daily lives.

26:52 Why did you pick 12:00 high?

26:54 It it is a classic in terms of being the gold standard for leadership teaching.

27:00 I've used it in you teaching MBA students.

27:03 I've used scenes from it because Gregory Pek comes in as a very

27:07 hard-nosed commander because he has a unit that's a little bit out of control,

27:11 a little bit undisiplined.

27:13 So it's a transition from uh uh understanding or trying

27:18 to understand the people in the unit which really makes up any

27:22 successful unit how the people are cared for to a discipline

27:27 to rebuilding a broken unit uh and and having them combat effective.

27:33 And it's just a fascinating story because

27:36 you see the dynamics that you know when

27:39 when you're appointed to a job as a commander or a leader of an organization,

27:44 you know, everyone tells you you have to care for your soldiers.

27:48 And the first implication of caring is

27:51 that you're taking care of them and you're

27:52 hugging them and making sure that they have

27:55 good food and good clothing and, you know, good place to sleep.

27:59 But sometimes the most intense method of caring is to treat them rough,

28:04 to make sure that they're abiding by standards,

28:07 that the standards have been instilled, that they're training hard.

28:11 And the reason you're doing that is for the long term.

28:14 You want your soldiers to survive on the battlefield.

28:17 In this case, it's it's about a an army

28:20 aircore unit going into battle in Europe.

28:24 But uh you know the commander in this unit actually comes across

28:29 as a prick early on uh and everybody hates him but they begin

28:33 to see how his standards and his driven training will turn them

28:37 into a unit and save their lives in the long in the long run.

28:41 Uh so that's why I like this movie.

28:43 It's just a great example of what good leadership entails.

28:48 And it's not just the easy stuff.

28:50 It's the hard stuff and the decisions that commanders make on the battlefield.

28:55 Yeah.

28:55 Yeah.

28:56 All right.

28:56 Uh we are going to move on to number three on your list.

28:59 It was this is a an A&E uh TV movie.

29:02 I think it came out in 2004, early 2000s.

29:06 Um the uh starring Tom Celich, Ike Countdown to D-Day.

29:10 Now uh this is this is what I was I was

29:12 a little bit surprised it was this high on your list,

29:14 but that that said Tom Celich excellent Dwight D.

29:18 Eisenhower.

29:19 That's a that's a that's a great

29:21 that's a great uh great role, great performance.

29:23 What why is why is this on your list?

29:25 Yeah.

29:25 But but tell me, Sunny, admit it.

29:27 You would never expect Tom Celich to be playing Dwight Eisenhower, would you?

29:32 No.

29:32 That's why it's so good.

29:33 It's You couldn't couldn't believe it.

29:35 And and I think Tom Celich deserved an Academy Award

29:39 for this or whatever awards they give out for made for TV movies.

29:42 But he plays a perfect calm,

29:46 understanding strategic level Eisenhower who has been given the job

29:52 by both General Marshall and President Roosevelt to pull a coalition together.

29:59 And for the first time in American history,

30:02 uh this is a guy that's pulling together

30:05 not just a political a military leader in Montgomery,

30:09 but also a political leader in Winston Churchill.

30:12 He's pulling together the Poles and and a very

30:15 divided French army uh between the free French

30:18 and the ones that that he's got to rely

30:21 on once he gets excuse me into the territory.

30:25 But it just shows the requirement of senior generals to conduct strategic

30:33 influence campaigns sometimes to accept the things

30:37 that they don't want to accept, make tough decisions that that help

30:43 allies contribute in the best means possible.

30:46 But it also shows how uh Eisenhower even while

30:50 doing all those things uh contributed to the building

30:54 of the D-Day force and the decisions he

30:58 had to make in terms of building the organization.

31:02 You know, this is another example I use in my MBA classes to talk about

31:06 strategic leadership because if you say strategic leadership

31:10 is a combination of ends, ways and means.

31:13 When Eisenhower got his message from General

31:16 Marshall that was transmitted from FDR, his mission statement was a simple one.

31:23 It said, "Enter to the continent of Europe and defeat

31:27 the Nazi war machine." And he had to figure everything else out.

31:32 how many troops he needed, where he was going to attack,

31:34 what kind of logistics was he going to require, uh what kind of training,

31:38 how how could he pull those multinational forces together,

31:42 where was he going to land, how he was going to do it,

31:44 and every single decision he had to make as a strategic

31:48 leader was questioned by a member of the alliance.

31:52 So, he had to really fuse all of that decision making into a perfect plan.

31:58 And then even when he had the perfect plan come down where he

32:02 had a joint force of the British Navy and the airborne troopers who

32:06 were going in and the air the army air corpses that was conducting

32:10 bombing campaigns and and the Marines that were attacking the Rangers on D-Day.

32:16 He had to pull all of that together in a massive plan

32:20 that I can't even imagine uh and at the same time make everybody happy.

32:25 And even then there were risk.

32:28 You know, just a few days before D-Day, uh,

32:31 he got a bad weather report and had to make a call.

32:34 Do we want to keep those forces off the coast of France,

32:38 potentially give ourselves away, ruin our deception effort, uh,

32:42 and maybe have them capsized in a major storm that's coming through,

32:46 or should I delay a day and see what the weather's going to look like tomorrow?

32:50 I can't imagine the kinds of decisionmaking

32:54 that that that required from one person and they

32:58 were all waiting for him to give the go and it all rested on his shoulders.

33:03 Then I'd add one more thing, Sunny,

33:05 and I think this is the most important thing.

33:08 As the D-Day landing was about to begin, he wrote two letters.

33:13 one which was a basically a congratulatory letter

33:16 and the other one was taking the fault if everything failed.

33:21 So he was ready to say, "Hey, I made some bad calls.

33:24 It's all my fault." That's something that really takes a dedicated,

33:29 selfless leader to do.

33:31 And I think Eisenhower is a is a true profile

33:35 in courageous actions for for what he did on D-Day,

33:38 notwithstanding what he did during the rest of the war.

33:42 Yeah.

33:42 the uh it's it's interesting that you

33:44 mentioned the the weather conundrum because

33:46 there's a movie coming out at the end of this month actually the end

33:48 of May uh called Pressure which is about that that very that very 3-day

33:53 stretch where they were trying to figure out well is this storm going to hold

33:55 off it's I believe it's told from mostly from the perspective of the uh

33:59 the meteorologist James Stag but uh Brendan

34:03 Fraser plays Dwight D Eisenhower I'm I'm

34:06 excited for that one I've heard very good things all right so number two

34:08 we've have another TV thing Band of Brothers this is the archetypal dad TV show.

34:15 This is what you sit down and you watch it uh over Memorial Day weekend.

34:19 This is this is the thing.

34:20 Band of Brothers.

34:21 Uh and of course this is you know um another movie about a spree core

34:26 and you know pulling together and you know fighting for the man next to you.

34:30 But it is also just every episode endless lessons about leadership.

34:35 Right.

34:36 that that's what makes it so uh important and why it's number two on my list

34:41 because it is a series and and throughout

34:45 this series of Band of Brothers you can

34:48 determine every single leadership lesson that you need

34:51 to teach and and what I'd suggest is

34:54 is you know I I'll tell you openly that most of these movies that I chose were

35:00 because of their leadership focus and this is

35:03 one of the best because you can point to any one of the episodes and draw

35:08 some type of leadership from communication issues to treatment

35:12 of soldiers to toxic leadership to training to standards

35:17 to discipline to caring uh to the emotions

35:21 of fear and anxiety in combat to doing the wrong things doing the right things.

35:27 I mean it's it's countless uh the the number of lessons you can learn

35:32 from this small box set of various uh

35:37 adventures of these troopers from the 101st Airborne Division.

35:41 And and what what's interesting to me too uh

35:44 again I I'll draw a personal reference to this.

35:47 I had the u the great honor of commanding a brigade of the 101st.

35:54 this brigade uh this same brigade that is portrayed in Band

35:58 of Brothers during my last tour in Iraq in 2007.

36:02 And so they certainly are proud of that history.

36:06 They're proud of the individuals that were part of the Band of Brothers.

36:09 And I will tell you that even some of those individuals from World War II

36:13 uh visited them after they came home

36:15 from Iraq and shared their lessons from, you know,

36:19 60 70 years ago to these young troopers who had just come out of combat in Iraq.

36:24 Again, just one of one of the best.

36:26 I don't I I you don't need, frankly,

36:29 you don't need either of us to tell you how good Bander Brothers is probably.

36:31 It is, but if you haven't watched it, please do.

36:34 It's It's I'm sure you can find it streaming

36:36 on HBO Max or pick up one of those box sets.

36:39 Uh the the Blu-ray set always looked really good.

36:42 And number one, another World War II picture from a similar creative team.

36:47 Steven Spielberg uh produced both.

36:50 Tom Hanks produced both.

36:52 Um but Steven Spielberg directed and Tom Hanks

36:55 starred in number one here uh Saving Private Ryan,

36:58 which you know, you cannot say enough about that opening sequence, right?

37:02 That's the combat sequence in a war movie.

37:05 It is the def definitional defining one.

37:08 But it's so much more than that.

37:09 I mean that that's that's the first 20 of the minutes of the movie.

37:12 There's another 2 hours plus after that which really gets into some of the very

37:16 hard uh the very hard decisions and choices and the chaos of combat.

37:22 Why why did you pick this as number one on your list of war movies?

37:26 just because it is so wellm made and and as you just said,

37:30 the first 22 minutes are the best representation

37:33 on film of any combat sequence I've seen.

37:37 Uh I've I've watched a lot of war movies and it was just so

37:42 incredibly realistic and the kind of experiences

37:46 those young men had on D-Day in 1944.

37:50 Uh it gives you a feel for the battlefield.

37:53 If you're not a soldier uh and and you're

37:55 not wincing uh through through that first 22 minutes, if you are a soldier,

38:01 you're probably shielding your eyes because you've experienced

38:04 it at one time in your life or another.

38:06 The first 22 minutes are just an understanding of what

38:11 we ask young men and now women to do.

38:14 But secondly, as the movie goes on, you see every

38:19 aspect of young soldiers lives when they're in a combat situation.

38:24 You see the smartass guy from the Bronx.

38:27 You've seen you see the guy who's the sniper who thinks he

38:31 can end the war just by getting within range of Adolf Hitler.

38:35 You see the medic who who uh basically sacrifices

38:39 his life to try and defend a little girl.

38:42 You see the arguments between, you know,

38:45 the captain and the smartass guy from the Bronx

38:49 about what to do with a prisoner of war,

38:51 the moral requirements of how to treat prisoners properly

38:55 because that is who we are and what we do.

38:58 You see the stoic face of the platoon sergeant

39:01 always backing up his leader uh in Tom Hanks.

39:05 and and and you see the real calm, cool, collected,

39:10 centered captain of Rangers in that's portrayed by Tom Hanks,

39:16 uh the the captain Miller, which I think is one of the best portrayals I've

39:20 ever seen of true leadership in a small unit organization.

39:25 And here's the fun fact for you, Sunny.

39:27 You're going to like this.

39:28 Right down the street from my house, about three or four miles,

39:31 is a retirement community, uh, a high-rise apartment building.

39:36 And a couple of years ago, I was asked to go to a hundth birthday party

39:41 of of a retired twostar general by the name of John Re.

39:45 Rae.

39:47 Uh, General Rain is now 104 years old, and he was Captain Miller on D-Day.

39:55 He was a ranger in the 75th Ranger Regiment at Point to Hawk and got

40:01 on to Dog Beach by mistake just like Tom Mil Captain Miller's team did.

40:07 And luckily for me, Major General Rain,

40:11 West Point graduate, class of 1942, is still alive.

40:15 He's as as verbal as you can imagine

40:20 with all of his uh capacities and and uh mind.

40:24 He's in a wheelchair.

40:26 He doesn't move all that well, but boy, he can tell stories of what it was like.

40:30 And I asked him if he had seen Private Saving Private Ryan.

40:34 And he said, he kind of shrugged.

40:36 He said, "Of course I have." He said,

40:38 "All of us have." And and then he said, I asked him, I said,

40:41 "How realistic was it?" And he kind of shook his head,

40:44 "No." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said,

40:47 "It was worse than what they portrayed in the film."

40:51 So that gives you an idea of even as bad as those first 22 minutes were

40:56 and the and the patrolling across Europe that that Ranger squad did.

41:02 Uh how bad it really was in terms

41:04 of what the greatest generation gave during World War II.

41:09 That's uh I mean that's that's intense.

41:11 That's a great story too, man.

41:12 104.

41:13 That's a that's great that he's still still with us.

41:16 Um that's our top 10.

41:18 I I like I defy anyone to come up with a better top 10.

41:20 If you have suggestions, leave them in the comments.

41:23 Uh hit hit like and subscribe and all that.

41:25 But really chime in.

41:26 Let us know what you think.

41:28 Um but there there is a there is another reason we are here,

41:30 which is again let's synthesize these uh some of these the lessons

41:35 from these movies to to kind of come up with a plan for folks.

41:39 Like if you want to learn how to be a better a better military leader, yes.

41:45 just a better incorporate how to incorporate these rules

41:49 and suggestions and themes into your life generally speaking.

41:53 How what can we take away from these to learn

41:55 how to be better leaders uh in in our lives?

41:59 Well, it's interesting to me, Sunny, that all leaders face chaos.

42:03 Uh they face crisis in their organizations.

42:06 We saw that in the medical community during COVID.

42:08 We see it uh in the economic community when there's a market crash.

42:13 But when you see it in combat,

42:15 we're talking about life and death and on a large scale.

42:19 Uh so how do you deal with crisis?

42:22 How do you control chaos?

42:25 How as a leader do you remain calm

42:27 in situations where your inner being is screaming out saying,

42:32 "I can't handle this anymore." uh h how do you deal with those things and how do

42:38 you prepare to be resilient when you're faced

42:41 with that kind of challenge with that kind of demand?

42:45 So that's that's one lesson.

42:47 Uh and and you learn that by just placing yourself

42:50 in situations where uh you step outside your bank of courage.

42:56 You try and take things on that you might not

42:59 otherwise take that that you find ways to push yourself forward

43:04 beyond the fear that you might have whether it's speaking

43:08 in front of a crowd or controlling a squad in combat.

43:12 They both have elements of fear in them.

43:14 And and you know normal human beings want

43:18 to shy away from fear, fight or flight.

43:21 But some human beings say let's take it

43:23 on and let's try and manage it and control the chaos.

43:28 That's number one.

43:29 Number two, the big lessons that I learn from from these uh

43:35 various movies is how many facets of leadership are out there?

43:41 uh how you communicate, what are your attributes,

43:44 what kind of character do you have,

43:46 what values do you adhere to, uh what is your presence,

43:50 what's your personal presence, not just the way you appear,

43:54 but the way you center yourself.

43:56 Uh how do you learn and grow every day to increase your intellectual capacity?

44:02 Um, how do you communicate and understand that communication is not only

44:07 how you speak but how you listen and how your body language

44:11 and tone of voice and facial expression and your techniques of delivering

44:16 that communication become so very important when you're trying to be precise?

44:21 How do you steward your organization and how do you build teams?

44:27 And then the last thing is how do

44:29 leaders claim authority and take responsibility for their actions?

44:34 These are the kinds of things I judge myself on and I judge other leaders on.

44:40 How do they do these various elements

44:43 of leadership and both their attributes and their competencies?

44:46 And then using all of those things,

44:49 how do they influence teens to do the right things to to have a moral

44:55 center and and to raise up and be above the common level of life.

45:00 Um, so every one of these movies has elements

45:04 of that that I like to pick out and say, see that?

45:07 See what they're doing?

45:09 That's leadership.

45:10 Um then there's the lesson truly of uh from a military

45:15 and political perspective the difference between

45:19 small unit tactics what those young soldiers

45:22 or sailors or airmen or marines or coast guardsmen are doing when they're

45:27 facing the threat to what are the political leaders and the senior generals

45:32 asking them to do and do they understand really what's happening

45:36 at the at the lower level and are those senior senior people really telling

45:41 the American public what their soldiers are going through and how they're trying

45:47 to protect them given uh the the best way they can do things.

45:52 And then really the final lesson and I'll I'll kind of end here.

45:55 What drives a nation to send their military to war?

46:00 Uh what are the reasons we use?

46:04 And they better be good ones.

46:06 There better be true threats and there better be an explanation

46:10 to those in a democratic society like the people who

46:13 are our civilians and also uh our congressional base because if

46:19 you're doing this willy-nilly or you're doing this on a whim,

46:22 it's not a good play when you're talking about putting lives at stake.

46:27 Uh you know, I often tell the story that I've got a box on my desk.

46:30 If I can pull it over here and it's got the pictures

46:36 of 253 soldiers that I lost under my command in combat.

46:42 You can see this and every day on the top

46:46 of the box it has a phrase that says make it matter.

46:48 That was something General Dempsey said.

46:52 That make it matter is the equivalent

46:54 of what Captain Miller said to Private Ryan

46:56 at the end of Saving Private Ryan when he

46:59 pulled him in close and he said, "Earn this.

47:02 Earn this." And then you see decades later,

47:07 Private Ryan being an old man walking up

47:10 to Captain Miller's grave in Arlington National Cemetery,

47:15 turning to his wife and saying, "Tell me I'm a good man.

47:20 Tell me I've earned this.

47:22 That's, you know, that's really something that should

47:25 come through in every war movie we watch.

47:29 It's an understanding of how hard it is to put your life on the line

47:34 when you raise your hand and say

47:35 you're going to support and defend the Constitution.

47:38 And it gives you an indicator of the challenges that those people

47:42 who wear the cloth of the country take when they do it.

47:45 Um, it's not a game.

47:47 It's not something that should be driven for only uh personal reasons.

47:52 It's to maintain the security of our country.

47:55 And in each one of these war movies,

47:57 to a certain degree, we see elements of that.

48:01 So that's that's my preaching for today, Sunny.

48:04 No, that was uh I look again this is a lesson

48:08 that everyone in in government uh in your in our personal lives

48:13 should think about uh when we're when we are discussing um

48:17 the the I don't whatever military actions are happening on any given day.

48:22 Lord Lord only knows uh where where we'll be next.

48:25 This was amazing.

48:27 Thank you so much for for the time, Mark.

48:28 I really appreciate it.

48:30 Appreciate it, Sunny.

48:31 Thanks for thanks for doing this.

48:32 you and Sam and Tim who and Sarah who all thought this up.

48:36 Uh it's going to be fun to to see what the reaction is to it.

48:39 Yeah.

48:39 And again, if you have ideas, leave them leave them in the comments.

48:42 And make sure, by the way, I didn't even mention this at the top of the episode,

48:45 but make sure if you enjoyed this, if you if

48:47 you took something away from it, and I hope you did,

48:50 uh make sure you pick up Mark's book,

48:51 If I Don't Return, A Father's Wartime Journal,

48:54 uh which is I like it's look, I I my own father served in in the Air Force.

48:59 he served in combat and it is a it's a it is it's a bracing thing.

49:04 People should people should read um the thoughts uh that that go through

49:10 those the heads of those who are serving

49:12 and the hearts of those who are serving.

49:14 Um it's uh it's important you know and if

49:17 if you enjoy these these bull work these fun bull

49:19 work talks that we do uh make sure that you

49:22 get tickets to our live shows out in California.

49:25 Right.

49:25 We've got two tour stops coming up.

49:28 I Mark and I aren't going to be there, but Sarah, Tim, and Sam will be.

49:30 Go to uh the bullwwork.com/events.

49:33 And uh I I I had a lot of fun here.

49:36 Thanks again, Mark.

49:36 Really appreciate it.

49:37 You got it.

49:38 Hey, Sunny, one thing though, we're probably going to get a lot of mail

49:40 saying we've missed one or two great movies.

49:42 And I'm sure we have because there's too many out.

49:45 There is.

49:45 No, this is this is why I'm saying just put it in the comments.

49:48 We We can do a we can do a second episode on everything we missed,

49:51 you know, in a couple weeks.

49:53 I think that would be that would be very doable.

49:55 Uh but it's it's going to be you know there are so many good ones.

49:59 Would be happy to do a makeup episode.

50:01 Sorry.

50:02 Sorry we missed your favorite uh episode.

50:05 That'll be that'll be a fun one, too.

50:07 All right.

50:07 Thanks, honey.

50:08 Appreciate it.