The Longest Day (1962)

It's somewhat fitting that a film titled The Longest Day should have a long running time. And while its 178 minutes don't exactly fly by, because a great many tiny dramas exist within the larger one (i.e. the World War II D-Day landings at Normandy in June, 1944) it rarely drags its heels.
Also noteworthy is the cast. It's packed with famous faces but many have little more than a cameo role. The closest it has to a leading man is either John Wayne or Robert Mitchum, but even they feature only occasionally because the binding thread is the event itself, not any one person or squad. That means we get scenes not just from the Allied side but the French and German sides, too, and in each case it's in the nation's native tongue, like it ought to be.

4 tough nuts out of 5