Lists
- ranked 3 in Roger Ebert's Best Films of 1979
- ranked 12 in Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films
- ranked 30 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills
- ranked 44 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies
- ranked 53 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time
- ranked 79 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
- ranked 79 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies
- ranked 128 in The IMDb Top 250
- ranked 257 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- ranked 273 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 287 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- ranked 467 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills Nominees
- one of Best Director Academy Award Winners
- one of Best Picture Academy Award Winners
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of Leonard Maltin's 100 "Must See" Films of the 20th Century
- one of New York Film Critics Circle Best Film Winners
- one of The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition
Understandably contentious Vietnam War film. As a piece of filmmaking it is indisputably powerful: the first Russian Roulette sequence is stunning.
Its characters and themes... I'm less sure. It's hard to read as either patriotic or pro-war, but neither does it necessarily feel anti-war. It's neither historically accurate nor racially sensitive. In 2021, the hardest sell is the way that Michael (Robert De Niro) is a kind of rugged ubermensch, the ultimate masculine archetype of self-reliance, to the extent that its treatment of other characters feels like a criticism -- as though a Real Man should be able to be tortured and come out whole, should never need help or comfort. If anything, it's anti-civilization.