Everyone’s favorite free streamer has a rich collection of war movies.

The best war movies streaming right now on Tubi

Everyone's favorite free streamer has a rich collection of war movies.

By Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman is a writer at **, mostly covering nostalgia. He has been writing about entertainment since 2007.

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May 10, 2026 6:00 p.m. ET

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Michael J. Fox and Christian Bale stuck in Vietnam, and William Holden as a POW in WWII. Credit:

Sunset Boulevard/Getty; Paramount/Getty; Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

As the cost of living increases and wages remain stagnant, there comes a point where you may need to reassess your monthly recurring costs. Maybe you don’t need *every *streaming service, especially when there are some free options available.

With that in mind, we salute Tubi, commonly known as the "People’s Streamer.” This free service (which, yes, does include ads — nothing is *truly *free) is the platform that most closely resembles an off-brand video store. If you’re old enough, you may recall visiting independent shops with bins of VHS tapes rentable for 99 cents a night, filled with titles you’d never heard of.

Tubi has this in spades, but in addition to the weirdo picks, there are always several “legit” titles that temporarily wash up on its shores as licensing deals ebb and flow. One genre that’s particularly rich is the war film.

As such, here’s a list of terrific (and sometimes terrifying) war movies you can stream on Tubi right now.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

A half-forgotten classic: Gene Hackman, Ryan O'Neal, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, and Dirk Bogarde in 'A Bridge Too Far'.

Screen Archives/Getty

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Robert Redford repeats, over and over, as he leads a battalion across the River Waal in rowboats under heavy enemy fire. It’s one of the most chilling war-movie sequences ever filmed, but there’s a good chance you’ve never seen it.

That’s because Sir Richard Attenborough’s *A Bridge Too Far *is something of a forgotten film, despite its enormous cast. In addition to Redford, there’s Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, James Caan, Laurence Olivier, Maximilian Schell, Michael Caine, and more.

The problem is that Operation Market Garden, the Allies’ attempt to enter Germany via the Netherlands, was a rout, and nobody wanted to see a movie where the good guys lost.

Casualties of War (1989)

Don Patrick Harvey, Michael J. Fox, and Sean Penn in 'Casualties of War'.

Sunset Boulevard/Getty

Brian De Palma could make anything he wanted after the box office and critical success of *The Untouchables*; he chose one of the most bleak, brutal stories ever produced by a mainstream Hollywood studio. *Casualties of War *concerns a true incident in which American G.I.s kidnapped, raped, and eventually killed a civilian while on patrol in Vietnam.

Sean Penn is at his repellent best as the evil sergeant, and Michael J. Fox plays the one soldier with a conscience. At the time, casting Fox was considered a misstep. This was the kid from *Family Ties *and *Back to the Future*, and some couldn't take him seriously in the trenches. In retrospect, it was brilliant. All soldiers are “normal people” before they get in uniform. Seeing how the realities of war change them is what’s important.

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K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)

Sadly, Harrison Ford in this movie does not say 'Get off my sub!' and then punch the bad guy into oblivion.

George Kraychyk/Paramount

In this sleek Cold War thriller from Kathryn Bigelow, Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson are a Soviet submarine commander and his XO rushed to sea before a proper shakedown.

Several mishaps quickly arise, causing the crew to band together and strategize how to save themselves from an imminent nuclear meltdown. It’s kinda like *Apollo 13* underwater, but with a lousy government that doesn’t much care about the safety of its people.

The emotional core comes when everyone realizes that to save the ship, some must sacrifice their lives. (And in a particularly cruel and painful way.) The obvious conclusion is this: Try to avoid working on experimental sub in Soviet Russia!

Platoon (1986)

Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen in 'Platoon'.

Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty

*Platoon*, loosely based on Oliver Stone’s own experiences in Vietnam, wasn’t just a box office success and a Best Picture winner. It's one of the few films that can claim to have changed the cultural conversation. Coming just 11 years after the official end to the disastrous Vietnam War, this frank (and frightening) soldier’s point-of-view movie was the tip of the spear in a national discussion over just what the hell happened over there.

Charlie Sheen is quite good as our eyes and ears on the ground, with Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger as yin-and-yang leaders pulling him in opposing ethical directions.

Rescue Dawn (2006)

Steve Zahn and Christian Bale in Werner Herzog's 'Rescue Dawn'.

Maverick German director Werner Herzog took a look at his own 1997 documentary *Little Dieter Needs to Fly *and thought, “This might work as a narrative feature, too.” (See Michael Apted’s *Incident at Oglala *and *Thunderheart,* or Morgan Matthews’ *Beautiful Young Minds *and *A Brilliant Young Mind,* for other examples of this phenomenon.)

In this harsh and gruesome story, Christian Bale plays German-American pilot Dieter Dengler, who is shot down in Vietnam and survives a prison camp and a jungle escape. Despite the brutal deaths of his colleagues, Dengler perseveres by never giving up hope, eventually earning the most well-deserved Butterfinger bar in history. (True story!)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Tom Hanks in 'Saving Private Ryan'.

This is one of the most popular war movies ever made — and for good reason. D-Day, which forms the initial harrowing set piece, remains one of the most logistically complex and influential single days in the history of man’s violent actions against his fellow man. (Where are the movies about “using your words”?!?)

Steven Spielberg deployed all his powers as a master filmmaker to make the beach landing sequence as horrifying as possible, and over 25 years later no one has even come close. The remainder of the film, in which a group of men put themselves at risk for the security of an individual — in direct opposition to Vulcan philosophy — becomes an increasingly intense exercise in dread.

Stalag 17 (1953)

Robert Strauss, William Holden, and Harvey Lembeck in 'Stalag 17'.

Paramount/Getty

Billy Wilder’s drama (with a little comedy) set in a WWII prison camp was revolutionary for its time, sanding the edges off typical war pictures by showing good guys who were also flawed, contradictory human beings.

William Holden, who won an Oscar for the role, engages in entrepreneurial schemes with the German guards, initiating distrust with his fellow prisoners. After an attempted jailbreak leaves two dead, he’s thought to be an informer.

Though not exactly a heroic figure, he becomes one in an attempt to clear his name. Note: This movie did *not *directly inspire the goofy sitcom *Hogan’s Heroes*, but that didn’t stop the playwrights who wrote the source material from suing.

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