The Call of Duty game franchise has taken the world by storm and continues to suck in new fans with each ing year with its cinematic storytelling and engaging blockbuster visuals. This can often leave fans wondering why there hasn't been an official movie to come out of the franchise yet but, in the meantime, there are plenty of movies that have inspired, and been inspired by, the games that a fan can watch right now.
These 10 movies directly reflect the main qualities that have made the Call of Duty games as popular as they are, from their period-set depictions of war to more modern depictions of armed combat.
Assembly (2007)
Feng Xiaogang's Chinese Civil War movie captures Call of Duty's love for both somber reverence and unmitigated carnage with huge battle sequences littering this sprawling story of military heroism and the brutality of war.
Assembly's eye for detail is never sacrificed in its pursuit of an impressive scale and it's enabled it to become massively popular within both its native country and the world over.
13 Hours (2016)
Michael Bay portrays armed conflict the only way he knows how (loud, disorientating, and emotionally distressful) and it's not the most inaccurate way of going about it.
His retelling of the storming of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi took a very politically-charged event and released it into a very politically-charged year, which earned it no favors. But a well-utilized ensemble of great actors and Bay's unabashed style make 13 Hours a thoroughly underrated modern war movie.
Enemy at the Gates (2001)
Jean-Jacques Annaud's star-studded WW2 movie, though very romanticized, still stands as one of the most accomplished depictions of the Battle of Stalingrad ever committed to film.
It tells a heavily-fictionalized of the legend of Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev (played by Jude Law) and his duel with Ed Harris' German counterpart throughout the destroyed city makes for an unforgettably gripping game of cat and mouse.
Act of Valor (2012)
Filmed using active service from the U.S. Navy, this modern military movie may not achieve the ultimate dream of seamlessly combining fiction with reality but it does benefit from a high level of expertise in its huge combat sequences.
Perhaps more than any other movie ever, it really looks and sounds like a Call of Duty experience; which is almost certainly not a coincidence. Act of Valor is unreservedly a recruitment tool for the military but that's not really something that you couldn't also say about a large percentage of all war movies and thrillers.
12 Strong (2018)
Chris Hemsworth leads a strong cast in this big-screen adaptation of a true story from the earliest days of the War in Afghanistan.
A producing credit from the always-explosive Jerry Bruckheimer ensures that this tale of the so-called “Horse Soldiers” balances its drama with sweeping battle.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
How was it not going to be on the list? Steven Spielberg’s WW2 men-on-a-mission movie has had a huge impact on modern popular culture and instantaneously redefined the war movie.
You can draw a clear, straight, line directly from Saving Private Ryan to the success of Call of Duty and all the things that the franchise has influenced.
Fury (2014)
An outstanding group of A-listers makes up David Ayers’ tank crew in this unforgiving take on the close of the Second World War.
Ayers cranks up the apocalyptic doom of all Saving Private Ryan’s grimmest elements to create a truly lasting experience in an immensely popular genre that so rarely sees unique entries.
Rambo (2008)
You can say that any Modern Warfare and beyond.
Rambo takes the no mercy 80s guerilla warfare of Sylvester Stallone’s action icon to the jungles of Burma with a gory brutality that, in league with the next movie, demonstrates that John Rambo may have actually been an undersung 80s slasher psycho this whole time.
Lone Survivor (2013)
Peter Berg’s Afghanistan War movie chronicles the events of the widely-publicized Operation Red Wings, which saw heavy casualties after four Navy SEALs became pinned down during a reconnaissance mission.
As the story, for the most part, follows the perspectives of the four SEALs (played by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch), Lone Survivor is a more intimate battle movie but no smaller in stature because of it.
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Ridley Scott’s movie masterpiece of modern warfare stylized armed combat in a similar way to Saving Private Ryan but amps up the confusion, ambiguity, and senselessness to create something starkly more relevant.
An incredible ensemble of actors makes up this violence-heavy human drama centering on a disastrous U.S. military raid in Mogadishu in 1993.
