Best movies like The Desert Rats

They crawled their way across the blazing sands of Africa... to turn disaster into victory!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Desert Rats Starring Richard Burton, James Mason, Robert Newton, Robert Douglas, and more. If you liked The Desert Rats then you may also like: The Four Feathers, Five Graves to Cairo, Yesterday's Enemy, The Way Ahead, Objective, Burma! and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

In North Africa, German Field Marshal Rommel and his troops have successfully fended off British forces, and now intend to take Tobruk, an important port city. A ramshackle group of Australian reinforcements sent to combat the Germans is put under the command of British Captain MacRoberts. The unruly Aussies immediately clash with MacRoberts, a gruff, strict disciplinarian, however this unorthodox team must band together to protect Tobruk from the German forces.

selected filters: Sort: Default

You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.

Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list

Know any good movies to watch like The Desert Rats 1953. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

Five Graves to Cairo

The British Army, retreating ahead of victorious Rommel, leaves a lone survivor on the Egyptian border who finds refuge at a remote desert hotel. He is helped by the hotel's owner, despite protest from the French chambermaid, afraid of the imminent arrival of Rommel and the Germans. John assumes the identity of the recently deceased waiter to survive.

Yesterday's Enemy

Set during the Burma Campaign of World War 2, this is the story of courage and endurance of the soldiers struggling at close quarters against the enemy. The film examines the moral dilemmas ordinary men face during war, when the definitions of acceptable military action and insupportable brutality become blurred and distorted.

The Way Ahead

A mismatched collection of conscripted civilians find training tough under Lieutenant Jim Perry and Sergeant Ned Fletcher when they are called up to replace an infantry battalion that had suffered casualties at Dunkirk.

Objective, Burma!

A group of men parachute into Japanese-occupied Burma with a dangerous and important mission: to locate and blow up a radar station. They accomplish this well enough, but when they try to rendezvous at an old air-strip to be taken back to their base, they find Japanese waiting for them, and they must make a long, difficult walk back through enemy-occupied jungle.

Only The Brave

A searing portrait of war and prejudice, 'Only the Brave' takes you on a haunting journey into the hearts and minds of the forgotten heroes of WWII - the Japanese-American 100th/442nd.

The Quick and the Dead

A small group of soldiers capture a German observation post, but in turn are captured themselves. They soon escape and--with the aid of two women--try to fight their way to safety.

Raid on Rommel

Captain Foster plans on raiding German-occupied Tobruk with hand- picked commandos, but a mixup leaves him with a medical unit led by a Quaker conscientious objector.

Rambo: First Blood Part II

John Rambo is released from prison by the government for a top-secret covert mission to the last place on Earth he'd want to return - the jungles of Vietnam.

Rambo III

Combat has taken its toll on Rambo, but he's finally begun to find inner peace in a monastery. When Rambo's friend and mentor Col. Trautman asks for his help on a top secret mission to Afghanistan, Rambo declines but must reconsider when Trautman is captured.

Khartoum

English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.

Battle of Los Angeles

In February 1942 Us forces engaged an unidentified flying object above Los Angeles. Now almost 70 years later, the alien invaders have returned.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson , the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

Captain Blood

Young Irish physician Peter Blood is exiled as a slave to Barbados, where he and his friend Jeremy are purchased by Colonel Bishop at the behest of his niece Arabella. With other slaves he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the terror of the Caribbean privateers until offered a commission in the English Navy. He defeats the French at Port Royal, and as a reward he is named governor of Jamaica and marries Arabella.

China Sky

During World War II, an American mission hospital is headed up by Dr. Gray Thompson and Dr. Sara Durand. Sara is secretly in love with Gray but hides her feelings as his new wife, Louise, arrives at the hospital. Sparks fly, however, when Louise becomes jealous of Sara, and then tries to convince her husband to leave war-torn China behind for a calmer life in the United States. But Thompson is attached to both Sara and the people who need his help.

The Hill

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.

The Devil's Brigade

At the onset of World War II, American Lt. Col. Robert Frederick is put in charge of a unit called the 1st Special Service Force, composed of elite Canadian commandos and undisciplined American soldiers. With Maj. Alan Crown leading the Canadians and Maj. Cliff Bricker the acting head of the American contingent, there is initial tension -- but the team comes together when given a daunting mission that few would dare to attempt.

The 7th Dawn

Political and personal intrigues surround a group of characters in Malaya, after the close of the Second World War.

Hornets' Nest

An American commando who's the sole survivor of a parachute jump into WWII-era Italy leads a group of children in a campaign of sabotage against the Nazis.

Tobruk

In September 1942, the German Afrika Korps under Rommel have successfully pushed the Allies back into Egypt. A counter-attack is planned, for which the fuel dumps at Tobruk are a critical impediment. In order to aid the attack, a group of British commandos and German Jews make their way undercover through 800 miles of desert, to destroy the fuel dumps starving the Germans of fuel.

You Can't Win 'Em All

During the 1922 Turkish Civil War, two Americans and a group of foreign mercenaries offer their services to a local Turkish governor who hires them as guards for a secret transport.

Darby's Rangers

Stationed in Scotland, Maj. William Darby and the men under his command are trained by British commandos, becoming the U.S. Army's 1st Ranger Battalion. Their drilling period is rigorous, but the men find time to romance local women before being deployed to fight the Nazis. U.S. forces battle from French North Africa to Italy, but when a surprise attack decimates the 1st and 3rd Battalions at the Battle of Cisterna, Darby and the 4th Battalion must come to their aid.

Gung Ho!

A true-life epic that revolves around an exclusive bataillon of the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, "Carlson's Raiders," whose assignment is to take control of a South Pacific island once possessed by the United States but now under Japanese command.

Ten Tall Men

Sgt. Mike Kincaid of the French Foreign Legion learns, from a Riff prisoner, that an attack will soon be made by the villainous Hussin on the Legion's outpost of Tarfa. Kincaid volunteers to lead nine other Legionnaires on a mission to delay Hussin's attack till reinforcements arrive. When he discovers that Hussin plans to marry Mahla, a girl from a rival tribe, in order to build a coalition against the French, Kincaid kidnaps Mahla. Hussin forcefully takes her back, but by now his planned attack on Tarfa is crumbling and Mahla has begun to fall in love with Kincaid.

The Fighting 69th

Although loudmouthed braggart Jerry Plunkett alienates his comrades and officers, Father Duffy, the regimental chaplain, has faith that he'll prove himself in the end.

Deadly Heroes

Ex-Navy SEAL Brad Cartowski is injured during an attack at Athens airport by terrorists who kidnap his wife and fly her on a hijacked plane to North Africa. Cartowski goes in pursuit, aided by another ex-SEAL, Cody Grant. Cartowski soon finds the terrorists' hide-out but is captured and electro-tortured before he manages to escape. He soon returns with reinforcements to rescue his wife and to wreak vengeance on Carlos, head of the terrorist ring.

Desert Command

Tom Wayne rescues Clancy, Renard and Schmidt in the Arabian desert and they join him in going after El Shaitan, a bad guy who is never seen as he tries to wipe out the Foreign Legion. Feature version of the movie serial, The Three Musketeers (1934).

Ice Cold in Alex

A group of army personnel and nurses attempt a dangerous and arduous trek across the deserts of North Africa during the second world war. The leader of the team dreams of his ice cold beer when he reaches Alexandria.

The Marksman

Chechen rebels take over a Russian nuclear plant and it's up to a mysterious agent (Snipes) to stop them.

Sahara

Sergeant Joe Gunn and his tank crew pick up five British soldiers, a Frenchman and a Sudanese man with an Italian prisoner crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their command after the fall of Tobruk. Tambul, the Sudanese leads them to an abandoned desert fortress where they hope to find water. Soon a detachment of German soldiers arrives and attempts to barter food for water, but Gunn and his followers refuse. When the Germans attack, Gunn leads his desert-weary men in a desperate battle, hoping that British reinforcements can arrive in time.

The Steel Claw

A Marine stationed in the Philippines loses a hand in an accident and is discharged from the Corps. When the Japanese invade the Philippines, he is called back into service to rescue a general held by Filipino guerrillas behind Japanese lines. Attaching a steel prosthetic in place of his missing hand, he and his men set out on the mission, which turns out to be not quite what he was told it was.

Timbuktu

An American wheeler-dealer woos a colonel's wife amid danger at a French Foreign Legion fort.

Tunisian Victory

Documentary made by the U.S. Army Signal Corps after the North African campaign.

Bitter Victory

During the second world war, two British officers, Brand and Leith, who have never seen combat are assigned a vital mission. Their relationship and the operation are complicated by the arrival of Brand's wife, who had a tryst with Leith years earlier.

The Plot to Kill Hitler

A historical recreation of the 1944 attempt by several German High Command Officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and take control of the German government.

Khyber Patrol

British officers of India is jeopardized when warlords Ahmed Shir and Prince Ishak Khan battle at the Khyber Pass. Enter Capt. Kyle Cameron of the British Lancers, whose renegade style may either save the day or doom the region to chaos. When Cameron learns that greater forces are pulling the strings, he attempts to destroy Shir's rebel faction from within.

Pacific Inferno

After the fall of the Philippines in World War II, the Japanese discover that Gen. MacArthur ordered millions of dollars in silver dumped in Manila Bay in order that it not fall into enemy hands. Among the prisoners the Japanese have taken are two American U.S. Navy deep-sea divers, whom they then force to dive in search of the sunken treasure.

Operation Delta Force 3: Clear Target

The anti-terrorist team Delta Force destroys a billion dollar cocaine stash, to the extreme displeasure of drug cartel leader Umberto Salvatore. To retaliate, he hijacks a stealth submarine and threatens to unleash a biological weapon with the power to kill everyone in New York City.

Cry of Battle

During World War II, the spoiled son of a wealthy businessman finds himself involved in the guerrilla movement fighting against the Japanese, and finds romance and adventure.

Sea of Sand

A small British army team is sent deep behind enemy lines to destroy a German petrol dump as part of the preparation for a major attack in the North African campaign. Sea of Sand was distributed in the US in a shortened version, Desert Patrol.

SEAL Team VI

Inspired by actual events: This heroic saga depicts an elite counter-terrorism team's black ops incursion into Iraq four days prior to Operation: Desert Shield and the harrowing consequences its members faced when their covert mission was compromised.

Hornblower: The Frogs and the Lobsters

Lieutenant Hornblower and his shipmates are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France.

Hornblower: Duty

Admiral Pellew interrupts Hornblower's wedding reception and tasks him to locate a British ship which has disappeared off the French coast, where Napoleon's troops are engaged in covert activities.

Marines, Let's Go

Following combat duty in Korea, a group of United States Marines (Tom Tryon, David Hedison and Tom Reese) are given a furlough in Japan.

The Steel Bayonet

Tunis, 1943. Battle-weary troops of Company C have orders to occupy a derelict Tunisian farmhouse. They are to establish an artillery observation post, reporting on enemy movements before the imminent offensive to liberate Tunis. However German infantrymen discover their operations. The ensuing battle for control of this small piece of land will decide who controls Tunis but more critically, the victors in the battle of democracy versus fascism.

Battle at Bloody Beach

This is only the second Audie Murphy movie set in WWII after his autobiographical "To Hell and Back." Here Murphy steps out of his usual kid-Western role to play a civilian working for the Navy helping supply guerilla insurgents in the Philippines. His sole motive is not politics nor bravery, but to find his bride from whom he was separated during the Japanese invasion two years before

Battles of Chief Pontiac

In pre-Revolutionary America, the efforts of a Colonial officer trying to broker a peace deal between Indian chief Pontiac and British and American settlers are threatened by the commander of a Hessian mercenary unit who embarks on a campaign of extermination against the Indians.

They Raid by Night

The British Commandos send Bob Owen to Norway to prepare for a raid. His mission also includes freeing General Heden who is being held by the Nazis. His aides include Eric Falken and Harry. Inga, a Norwegian girl to whom Falken was once engaged but who has become the sweetheart of Oberst Von Ritter, betrays their hiding place.

Sky Commando

Colonel Ed Wyatt is regarded by pilots under his command as being a ruthless disciplinarian. His co-pilot, Lt. Hobson Lee, and Jo McWethy, a war correspondent assigned to the squadron become more friendly than meets Wyatt's approval. When Wyatt's plane is forced down behind enemy lines, he orders his crew to proceed to the American lines with the vital film they have shot, while he remains behind to hold off the enemy.

More related lists

Sort results by:

X close
Default
Clear filters
...