9 Uber-Jingoistic Movies That Are Still Legitimately Great

Some films are so in love with the USA, so in adoration of the Red, White and Blue, that they practically scream "America, fuck yeah" from the get-go. They are the uber-jingoistic, movies that fetishize military hardware, feature often overbearingly triumphant scores, and all-round promote US values like they're selling American greatness itself. They're about men being men - specifically American men - doing great things in the name of Uncle Sam. Already this year we've had two films made in such a mold - 13 Hours and London Has Fallen - that absolutely flopped. Tub-thumping jingoism doesn't always have to be to a film's detriment, however. American cinema has produced plenty of movies that heartily pledge allegiance to the flag and that still come packed with artistic merit. There have been some Hollywood movies that practically came draped in the Stars and Stripes that still turned out to be legitimately great, and here are nine examples. 9) American Sniper American Sniper, Clint Eastwood's blockbuster biopic of US marksman Chris Kyle, divided critics on release. It was well-crafted, well-acted and completely enamored with the American war machine, with its focus on one of the most controversial figures to have ever fought for the US of A. Kyle killed many on his tours in Afghanistan, and suggested later that he actually derived pleasure from it - and this is the guy that Eastwood's film idolizes. Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle called the movie "Star Wars from the point of view of the stormtroopers" - an apt description. What saves American Sniper from being nothing but empty propaganda is Eastwood's well-honed minimalistic style and a compelling lead performance by Bradley Cooper. Through him, Eastwood's film becomes a sort of enigmatic character study. We wonder whether Cooper's inscrutable anti-hero feels haunted by his actions, or whether he's even been affected at all. It's to Cooper's credit that his Kyle is so fascinating, despite always remaining so chillingly distant. 8) Flags Of Our Fathers Another patriotic Eastwood joint, Flags of our Fathers is just as filled with respect for veterans as American Sniper, only this time Clint ups the hero count, and packs his movie to the brim with chiseled killing machines. Flags of our Fathers tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima (from a US perspective; to look at it from the other side, see Eastwood's own superior Letters From Iwo Jima), and the men seen raising the flag in Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph. As with American Sniper, Eastwood can't see US troops as anything other than brave warriors defending the realm. What makes the film interesting though is how it contrasts the reality of WWII with the image the propaganda-fed public have back home. In Flags of our Fathers, the returned victors of Iwo Jima wear brave faces as they promote the war effort on behalf of their government; in reality, they're for various reasons doomed to misery as soon as they set foot back on US soil. 7) Captain America Captain America, as you'd know from the title alone, isn't about just any superhero: it's about the American superhero. Chris Evans' beefcake Cap represents the nation itself, and does he ever kick ass. Wearing the colors of the flag at all times, Steve Rogers practically wins WWII by himself. That is, when he can find time off from his day job, of singlehandedly raising the entire defense budget back home at some insanely patriotic charity events (where the Americana is dialled up to 11). Of course, director Joe Johnston views all this through a deliberately nostalgic lens. As with his earlier WWII-set movie, The Rocketeer, Johnston takes great pleasure in paying tribute to the period and the kind of all-American heroism that was so popular during Hollywood's Golden Age. Captain America is jingoistic, and proudly so, but Johnston approaches the material with tongue firmly in cheek. It means he gets to have his cake and eat it, too. 6) Black Hawk Down One criticism leveled at Black Hawk Down on release was that its director Ridley Scott made America's soldiers look heroic, while presenting the Somali combatants facing them as mere cannon fodder. It's a legitimate concern: Scott shoots and blows up the residents of Mogadishu with the uncomplicated glee of a child playing with his GI Joes. That said, few directors have the eye for an alien environment (which Somalia is here presented as) and for action that Scott has. Black Hawk Down might be politically and morally problematic, but my is it beautiful to look at. Shot in an almost hallucinatory style, incorporating multicolor filters and handheld elements, Black Hawk Down has become something of a template for modern war movies stylistically. The film is also almost without peer when it comes to its exhilarating combat, with Scott retaining interest for the whole two-and-a-half-hours even though his entire film is essentially just one giant goddamn firefight. 5) Saving Private Ryan No recent movie, including Black Hawk Down, has decided the way war looks on film as much as Saving Private Ryan. The washed-out, documentary-like aesthetic in its opening D-Day chaos has become a blueprint style for any filmmaker wanting to convey the shocking experience of armed conflict. It's Steven Spielberg in full-on genius mode, making pure, unadulterated cinema out of a harrowing landmark event. The movie's also an absolute sap-fest, beginning with the image of the American flag flying in the wind and ending with an elderly gentleman reminiscing about a group of fellow soldiers that died for their country. Saving Private Ryan is difficult to watch in parts for its brutal violence, and hard to watch in others for its unashamed, hard-line, apple pie-fed patriotism. 4) Rocky IV Forget that the Rocky series started out as a kind of gritty, On The Waterfront-esque tale of a boxer down-and-out on the streets of Philadelphia: Rocky IV is a boxing film for true Americans. Taking place largely in Russia at the end of the Cold War, Rocky IV finds the titular meat-puncher standing up for America and taking the fight to Ivan Drago, a colossal fighter representing the might of the USSR. After Drago kills Rocky's pal Apollo Creed in the ring, the stage is set for a showdown, between the champ and the contender from the Eastern Bloc, between West and East, between America and no-good commie scum. Obviously Rocky is victorious, and of course he also wins over the freedom-starved Russian crowd, with his "if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change" speech somehow getting even Russian state ministers on their feet applauding his mumbled patter. 3) Miracle Echoing Rocky IV, Miracle is another movie in which the Soviet Union is defeated by sport. And not just any old sport, but hockey, and more specifically the US hockey team, competing against the USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympics. It's a true story, given an admirably un-glam look by Gavin O'Connor, and undoubtedly the director's greatest decision was to cast the mighty Kurt Russell as USA team coach and head speech-giver, Herb Brooks. Like all great sports movies, Miracle has its share of rousing speeches. The best comes towards the end though, when Herb assures his boys that they'll defeat Soviet Russia plainly because they're born winners. The players nod earnestly and look stern, not for a second doubting that the greatest country on Earth will triumph. Then, obviously, they do, because the film's called Miracle, and anything else would be a crushing disappointment. 2) Lone Survivor So gung-ho it features a crack team of Navy SEALS getting headshot, gut-shot, then thrown off of cliffs and surviving, Lone Survivor plays in parts like a slickly-made, beefed-up promotional video for the might of the US armed forces. It even opens with a training montage, made out of documentary footage of all-American badasses putting themselves through hell for Lady Liberty, and absolutely fucking loving it. Considering part of the film's M.O. appears to be recruiting cinema-goers, Lone Survivor is a surprisingly brutally realistic take on modern warfare. Thanks to Peter Berg's raw yet precise directorial style, some convincingly gory makeup effects by Greg Nicotero, and performances from a central acting fourpiece that increasingly smack of desperation, Lone Survivor makes an art of distressing combat conditions. Before the movie ends on a maudlin montage that emphasizes how glorious it is to get slaughtered for your country, Lone Survivor's action is brilliantly visceral. 1) Team America: World Police Yes, it's a parody. All the same, Team America is one of the greatest jingoistic movies of all time, celebrating US excess and heroism as it simultaneously wrings laughs out of overblown depictions of both. It's a story of global interventionalism and American exceptionalism, done with puppets. It's every other uber-patriotic film on this list put into a blender and served with irony, by the unparalleled comedic double act of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Team America has everything you could want in a jingoistic movie: villains that hail from the Middle-East and lefty Hollywood, exploding monuments, trigger-happy all-American heroes, puppet sex and Michael Moore blowing himself up as a suicide bomber in the name of loony liberal values. It's also one of the funniest films from this century so far, a comedy that the creators behind South Park have arguably yet to top.