Movies like The Challenge (1970)
The best movies like The Challenge (1970) are The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Blood on the Sun (1945) and Battleground (1949). If The Challenge hooked you with its war and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Longest Day (1962)7.6/10 from 1,070 votes
- NewestBonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024)Released 2024
The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlood on the Sun (1945)
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 20s Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
SnoozefestMovies like thisBattleground (1949)
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWar for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017)
An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDevotion (2022)
The harrowing true story of two elite US Navy fighter pilots during the Korean War. Their heroic sacrifices would ultimately make them the Navy's most celebrated wingmen.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPassage to Marseille (1944)
A freedom-loving French journalist sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyranny.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSergeant York (1941)
Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMeltdown: Days of Destruction (2006)
Despite scientist Nathan's warnings, his boss continues an experiment meant as publicity for his satellite firm: exploding an asteroid. Instead it splits, and the major piece, the size of Iceland, changes course to earth. It is deflected but so close that it shift our course closer to the sun, causing rapid extreme heating, hopefully only mid-term. Nathan warns his sister, TV journalist Carly, and she her lover, police detective Tom. He brings his unruly daughter Kim, her ex-con lover C.J. and her mother, nurse Bonnie, when Nathan offers a flight to a friend's Arctic weather station. Tom takes charge of a dangerous trip to the airport, as everywhere on earth things catch fire and people fight for water, transport and sheer looting.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFixed Bayonets! (1951)
The story of a platoon during the Korean War. One by one, Corporal Denno's superiors are killed until it comes to the point where he must try to take command responsibility.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Longest Day (1962)
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Duellists (1977)
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024)
As the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler, risking his faith and fate to save millions of Jews from genocide.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHornblower: The Frogs and the Lobsters (1999)
Lieutenant Hornblower and his shipmates are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFlyboys (2006)
The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNormal (2003)
A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaster and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
After an abrupt and violent encounter with a French warship inflicts severe damage upon his ship, a captain of the British Royal Navy begins a chase over two oceans to capture or destroy the enemy, though he must weigh his commitment to duty and ferocious pursuit of glory against the safety of his devoted crew, including the ship's thoughtful surgeon, his best friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBreaker Morant (1980)
During the Boer War, three Australian lieutenants are on trial for shooting Boer prisoners. Though they acted under orders, they are being used as scapegoats by the General Staff, who hopes to distance themselves from the irregular practices of the war. The trial does not progress as smoothly as expected by the General Staff, as the defence puts up a strong fight in the courtroom.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEmperor (2012)
As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will be hanged as a war criminal. Influencing his ruling is his quest to find Aya, an exchange student he met years earlier in the U.S.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOperation Mincemeat (2022)
In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain would fool Nazi spies into believing the Allied forces were planning to attack by way of Greece rather than Sicily.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTuulinen päivä (1962)
The strange, disjointed love story in the existentialist film Windy Day transported the young lovers to an island off the town of Kotka.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Catch-22 (1970)
A WWII military pilot makes a valiant effort to be certified insane in order to be excused from flying missions. But there's a catch.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlow and Ebb (2024)
Crab fishers Fred and Malte have never talked about their feelings. After a stroke of fate Fred experiences a mental breakdown.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Silmido (2003)
On 31 January 1968, 31 North Korean commandos infiltrated South Korea in a failed mission to assassinate President Park Chung-hee. In revenge, the South Korean military assembled a team of 31 criminals on the island of Silmido to kill Kim Il-sung for a suicide mission to redeem their honor, but was cancelled, leaving them frustrated. It is loosely based on a military uprising in the 1970s.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKilldozer (1974)
A small construction crew on an island is terrorized when a spirit-like being takes over a large bulldozer, and goes on a killing rampage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
SnoozefestMovies like thisFarewell to the King (1989)
An American soldier who escapes the execution of his comrades by Japanese soldiers in Borneo during WWII becomes the leader of a personal empire among the headhunters in this war story told in the style of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The American is reluctant to rejoin the fight against the Japanese on the urging of a British commando team but conducts a war of vengeance when the Japanese attack his adopted people.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Home of Dark Butterflies (2008)
Haunted by his traumatic past and cautious about the prospects of an uncertain future, a fourteen year old boy named Juhani winds up in an isolated boys' home known as The Island. Juhani has been shuttled between foster homes and temporary families for the past six years, leaving any prospect of stability in his life a faded dream. When Juhani winds up in a remote shelter for troubled youth known as The Island, he has little idea of how ruthless superintendent Olavi Harjula can truly be.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Birds II: Land's End (1994)
Ted and his family have just moved to the sleepy coastal town of Gull Island so that he can complete work on his thesis. Everything couldn’t seem more picturesque about their new, seaside home… that is, except for the increasing number of aggressively behaving birds.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
SnoozefestMovies like thisEvil Under the Sun (1982)
An opulent beach resort provides a scenic background to this amusing whodunit as Poirot attempts to uncover the nefarious evildoer behind the strangling of a notorious stage star.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Naked Island (1960)
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Challenge?
The closest matches to The Challenge are The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Blood on the Sun (1945) and Battleground (1949). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Challenge?
Start with The Scarlet and the Black (1983), the closest match to The Challenge.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Challenge?
The Longest Day (1962), rated 7.6/10 by 1,070 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Challenge?
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Challenge?
Yes: The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Blood on the Sun (1945) and Battleground (1949).
How are movies similar to The Challenge chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Challenge, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.