The best war movies on Hulu (November 2022)

There’s a surprising dearth of Revolutionary War movies in Hollywood, but Roland Emmerich’s epic, The Patriot, does more than enough to scratch the itch. After earning glory and respect on the battlefield during the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) has retired to lead a simple life on a South Carolina farm with his family. When talk of revolution reaches Charleston, he votes against getting involved with the Continental Army, only for the war to come to his doorstep nonetheless two years later, sweeping his son Gabriel (Heath Ledger) into the patriotic fervor.

When Gabriel returns home bloodied after a nearby engagement, the Martins care for both him and wounded British soldiers who wander by looking for help. But British Colonel William Tavington (Jason Isaacs) rewards Martin by arresting Gabriel, executing the remaining wounded Continental soldiers, and murdering Martin’s younger son in cold blood. Fueled by vengeance and bloodlust, Benjamin resumes his mythic mantle, “The Ghost,” as he forms a militia and wages brutal guerrilla warfare against the British.

War is not a purely American phenomenon, nor is the ugly history of colonialism. The East takes viewers to Indonesia, a colony of the Netherlands looking to gain independence after World War II. The movie looks at the conflict on a micro scale through the eyes of a young soldier coming to grips with his missions, which come increasingly at odds with his conscience. The Dutch film doesn’t pull punches when it comes to confronting the terrible things colonizers did to peoples they deemed inferior or subject to be ruled, ideas that apply throughout the western world.