The Fourth of July is a complicated holiday for me if I’m being honest. I love the Founders. I love what the Revolution stood for, the idea that a group of men looked at an overreaching government telling them what they could and couldn’t do and decided enough was enough. The Declaration of Independence is one of the most remarkable documents ever written, and I’m a big fan of the Constitution too (strictly speaking, none of this living document open to interpretation nonsense). What those men risked to put their names on it is something worth sitting with.
What America has become in the two and a half centuries since is a different conversation, and not one I’m going to get into here because this is a movie list and we’d be here all day.
What I will say is that the spirit of 1776, the defiance, the refusal to be governed by people who don’t have your interests at heart, the willingness to put everything on the line for something worth fighting for, is worth celebrating even when the modern version of the country makes that complicated. The Founders deserved better than what followed. So do we. Just too bad the folks in the early 1900s didn’t put up any resistance that has led to the monstrosity we have now. But we’re not going to let world affairs and the state of the last 125 years get in the way of a good time.
Now, last month I put together a Top 10 War Movies for Memorial Day list that was strictly war films from start to finish. That list was built around grief, sacrifice, and the weight of what combat actually costs. This one is different. It’s a Fourth of July list, which means the only real criteria is that it captures something of the spirit of the day. Freedom. Defiance. American identity. A little swagger. Some of these are war films. Some of them aren’t. All of them belong on this list and all of them are getting full reviews in the lead-up to July 4th, so check back regularly as we count down.
10. Sergeant York (1941)
Gary Cooper won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this one and he earned every bit of it. Alvin York was a real man, a Tennessee sharpshooter and devout Christian who initially sought conscientious objector status before ultimately enlisting and becoming one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I. The story sounds like Hollywood invented it, except Hollywood didn’t have to. Cooper plays York with a quiet, plainspoken dignity that makes the character feel completely real, and the film handles the tension between his faith and his duty with more honesty than you’d expect from a 1941 production. Old Hollywood at its most sincere, and a fitting way to open this list.
9. The Great Escape (1963)
Technically a British operation, but the spirit is pure Fourth of July. Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn — the cast is stacked and every single one of them is operating at full cool. The film is based on the true story of a mass escape attempt by Allied prisoners of war from a German camp, and it’s one of the most purely entertaining films ever made. McQueen on that motorcycle is one of cinema’s great images. If freedom has a face it looks a lot like Steve McQueen trying to jump a barbed wire fence on a stolen German bike.
8. Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima film takes a different angle than most war pictures. Rather than focusing purely on the battle, it examines what happens to the men after the famous flag-raising photograph turns them into reluctant symbols. The gap between the image and the reality is the whole point, and Eastwood explores it with the kind of unsentimental intelligence that defines his best directorial work. Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, and Adam Beach lead a strong ensemble. It’s a more melancholy film than most on this list, which actually makes it an interesting counterpoint to the celebration happening outside your window.
7. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Nobody expected Top Gun: Maverick to be as good as it is. Tom Cruise returning to Pete Mitchell thirty-six years later and delivering one of the best pure action films of the last decade is not something anyone had circled on their calendar, and yet here we are. Maverick is everything a sequel should be, respectful of what came before, confident enough in itself to push the story forward, and technically stunning in ways that remind you what practical filmmaking looks like when someone actually commits to it. The aerial sequences are extraordinary. The emotional payoff is earned. And it’s as unabashedly American as anything on this list, which on the Fourth of July is exactly what you want.
6. 1917 (2019)
Sam Mendes shot this WWI film to look like a single continuous take, following two British soldiers across No Man’s Land to deliver a message that could save sixteen hundred lives. The technical achievement alone is staggering, but what makes 1917 work beyond the gimmick is that it genuinely puts you inside the experience in a way that most war films can’t. There’s no cutting away, no relief from the tension, no moment where the film lets you breathe and reset. George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman are both exceptional, and the film has one of the most quietly devastating final images of any war film in recent memory.
5. Red Dawn (1984)
The premise of Red Dawn is simple and the execution is pure adrenaline. Soviet and Cuban forces invade the United States and a group of Colorado high school kids take to the mountains, call themselves the Wolverines, and fight back. Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey — the cast is a who’s who of 1980s cinema and everyone is completely committed to the premise. Red Dawn was the first film ever released with a PG-13 rating and it earned every bit of it. It’s a film about ordinary Americans refusing to be occupied, which on the Fourth of July feels exactly right. Nobody is coming to save you. Sometimes you have to save yourself.
4. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Oliver Stone directing Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic, a Vietnam veteran who came home paralyzed and became one of the most prominent anti-war activists in the country. The title alone earns it a spot on this list. Cruise gives the best dramatic performance of his career here, starting as a wide-eyed patriot volunteering for Vietnam and ending as a broken man trying to rebuild himself into something new. Stone was deep in his Vietnam trilogy by this point and he brings everything he learned making Platoon to this film. It’s uncomfortable and angry and honest in ways that will sit with you long after the credits roll. Not an easy watch, but an important one.
3. Independence Day (1997)
Look, I know. It’s an alien invasion movie. But if you’re going to tell me there’s a more Fourth of July film in existence than Independence Day I’m going to need to hear the argument, because I don’t think one exists (with the obvious exception of the two above it on the list, of course). Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman giving a presidential speech that every kid who grew up in the nineties has memorized at least partially. The moment the White House blows up is one of the defining cinematic images of the decade. Put it on, turn it up, and enjoy your holiday.
2. Top Gun (1986)
Before Maverick reminded everyone how good Tom Cruise is, there was the original. Top Gun is pure 1980s American confidence distilled into a hundred and ten minutes of fighter jets, leather jackets, and volleyball on the beach. Cruise as Pete Mitchell, call sign Maverick, is the kind of effortlessly cool screen presence that Hollywood doesn’t and can’t produce anymore as an original idea. Val Kilmer as Iceman is one of cinema’s great rivalries. The flying sequences hold up completely. The soundtrack is embedded in the DNA of anyone who grew up in that decade. Top Gun isn’t subtle and it isn’t trying to be. It’s America at its most swaggering and self-assured and on the Fourth of July that’s not a flaw, it’s the entire point.
1. The Patriot (2000)
There was never any other choice for number one on a Fourth of July list. Mel Gibson as Benjamin Martin, a South Carolina farmer and reluctant hero of the American Revolution who picks up a rifle after the war comes to his front door and takes something he can’t get back. Roland Emmerich directing at a level he’s rarely matched before or since. Heath Ledger as Martin’s eldest son Gabriel in one of the best performances of his too-short career. And Jason Isaacs as Colonel William Tavington, one of cinema’s great villains, a man so purely cruel that every scene he’s in crackles with menace.
The Patriot is big, emotional, occasionally brutal, and unabashedly patriotic in a way that Hollywood rarely allows itself to be anymore. The battle sequences are visceral and creative, particularly the early ambush sequence where Martin and his younger sons rescue Gabriel from a British column. Gibson’s performance is anchored by grief and fury and a love for his family that makes every decision he makes feel completely real. It’s the perfect Fourth of July film because it’s about the actual founding of this country, the cost of it, and the men who paid that cost without knowing whether any of it would work.
Fire up the grill, pour something cold, and put The Patriot on.
Happy Fourth of July (yes, I know it’s June 15th as of this posting). Two hundred and fifty years in and the spirit of 1776 is worth holding onto, even when everything built on top of it gives you reason to question it. The Founders were onto something. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Agree, disagree, or think I got it completely wrong? Say so in the comments or over at the Vortex Effect Forums.
