War

Today I will talk about war.
Or more particularly, war films. Because I have never actually been in a war, despite effectively living in the middle of one for most of my life. But I have never actually been in a war. No-one has ever shot at me or taken me prisoner and slapped me across the face with a pair of leather gloves, shone a bright light in my face, and said, "We have ways of making you talk."
No. None of that.
But can you think of any war film that doesn't ultimately glamorise war? One that doesn't appeal to young men and make them think, " I would like to go and do that."
Because as someone who will hopefully now never have to go and fight in a war, every time I watch a war film, it always sort of leaves me with the feeling that I have missed out on something. Some great life-changing experience, where you got to bond with your buddies and do something really heroic in the process.
Because that seems to me to be the essential central theme of most war films. Some of them try to show the horror of war, but they always focus on some sort of heroic action, which appeals to young men and makes them think, "I would like to do something like that."
Maybe someone should make a war film from the point of view of a child living in a town somewhere, and one day some soldiers come along and just blow his parents' heads off for no good reason. And then, instead of the child going on some mission to avenge the attrocity, he just spends the rest of his life feeling really bad about it, and not understanding why it happened.
Would that make a good film?