My kid and I recently watched Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, and 1917. It was a real chore to get through BoB and he fell asleep during some of the less action oriented episodes. SPR was better but I still had to poke him a few times. The death camp scenes nor the gore seemed to phase him at all(12yo). He said 1917 was a masterpiece, but probably helped that he recognized the over-the-top scene towards the end. Not complaining, 1917 is a very good movie, but not the ranking I would have expected.
What should we watch next?
BoB is the best war show Hollywood has ever produced, sorry about your son's poor tastes (in ranking BoB behind the other two)! I don't think 1917 would even rank in my top 10 for war movies!
With a 12 year old's attention span in mind I would say go with
Blackhawk Down and/or maybe
Warfare. There are movie/TV shows that I like more, such as
Generation Kill and
Dunkirk, but I don't think they would necessarily hold a kids interest either. Same with
Master and Commander, as it's a war movie in terms of what it would be like hunting and being hunted on a ship of the line, but probably wouldn't hold a kids interest.
Come and See is from the perspective of a kid his age, but I'm not sure the Nazi brutality depicted would be appropriate. It's been too long since watching it to be able to rate how it really compares to the three you just watched. I've only seen it once and found it good but not great; it might hit differently for your son, since the kid is approximately the same age.
If you want to move timelines and cultures,
Kagemusha is a bit of a war movie and a lot of dudes walking around with swords and armor(ancient Japan). It came on the USA channel late one night when I was a kid and thought it was great, but I may have been around 15 at the time.
Finally, I love
Gettysburg and it is one of the most historically accurate movies ever made. Like
Blackhawk Down there isn't much else, other than the war, but that war is a slower pace than "modern" war.
