Saving Private Ryan is the Best War Movie

London, (ANI): Steven Spielberg's flick Saving Private Ryan, starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon, has topped the list of all time best war movies. More than 3,000 members of the online DVD and games rental service, Lovefilm, took part in the poll. The survey was conducted to mark the release of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Saving Private Ryan is an Oscar-winning epic about the D-Day landings and it pipped Steve McQueen starrer The Great Escape to land the honour.

The 1998 Spielberg classic received 21 per cent of the fans' votes. The Great Escape got 11 percent of votes, and it pipped another Spielberg movie, Schindler's List, to grab the second spot. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, based on Josef Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, was ranked fourth with nine per cent of the votes. The Vietnam War inspired Full Metal Jacket by director Stanley Kubrick and Oliver Stone's Platoon, came fifth and sixth.

Mel Gibson starrer Braveheart claimed the seventh spot, Back Hawk Down, a tale of American troops in Somalia, came eighth. Michael Cimino's haunting The Deer Hunter was positioned at number 10. Wolfgang Peterson's German U-Boat drama Das Boot was the only non-English language film to make it in to the top 10 in ninth place.

The Telegraph quoted Darren Bignell, Lovefilm's communications manager, as saying: "Having polarised opinion at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Inglourious Basterds marks the comeback of one of modern cinema's most revered directors. "Tarantino fans have been chomping at the bit for his latest offering and we'll soon discover whether it hits the mark with cinema-goers."

The Top 10 War Films Ever:

1 Saving Private Ryan (1998) 21 percent

2 The Great Escape (1963) 11 percent

3 Schindler's List (1993) 10 percent

4 Apocalypse Now (1979) 9 percent

5 Full Metal Jacket (1987) 7 percent

6 Platoon (1986) 6 percent

7 Braveheart (1995) 5 percent

8 Black Hawk Down (2001) 4 percent

9 Das Boot (2006) 2 percent

10 The Deer Hunter (2078) 1 percent (others 24 percent)