Who doesn't love a good war movie — the romance, the spectacle, the exhilaration, the drama, the heartbreak? Well, as it turns out, most critics seem to hate a majority of war films and save their positive reviews for a select few, such as "Apocalypse Now," "Full Metal Jacket," and "Saving Private Ryan." Granted, the genre has produced some real stinkers over the years, but plenty of war epics also endured unwarranted critical disdain; many of these pictures provided rock-solid entertainment but were labeled cliché, sentimental, or too noble for their own good.
Imagine calling a film set in World War II too earnest or berating a romantic epic for its love story.
Look, I'm just as enamored with and respectful of a critic's opinion as the next person, but we can all agree they get it wrong sometimes. As proof, I've compiled a list of war epics I believe were...
Imagine calling a film set in World War II too earnest or berating a romantic epic for its love story.
Look, I'm just as enamored with and respectful of a critic's opinion as the next person, but we can all agree they get it wrong sometimes. As proof, I've compiled a list of war epics I believe were...
- 1/22/2023
- by Jeff Ames
- Slash Film
The tone of Clint Eastwood's 2006 war film "Flags of Our Fathers" might be surprising. "Flags of Our Fathers" is a film extrapolated from the celebrated 1945 Joe Rosenthal photograph titled "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima," taken at the eponymous battle, and featuring a group of American soldiers hoisting their nation's flag just after the carnage. The photograph also served as the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial, sculpted in 1954 and located in Arlington, Virginia. The screenplay was an adaptation of a book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, whose fathers are featured in the photograph, hence the title.
Ever since the days of "Twelve O'Clock High" in 1949, whenever American filmmakers make movies about American soldiers, they tend to be romanticized stories of survival and victory. Given the subject matter of "Flags of Our Fathers," one might presume that it, too, stands as a tale of honor and tenacity.
Ever since the days of "Twelve O'Clock High" in 1949, whenever American filmmakers make movies about American soldiers, they tend to be romanticized stories of survival and victory. Given the subject matter of "Flags of Our Fathers," one might presume that it, too, stands as a tale of honor and tenacity.
- 1/21/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
In 2006, Clint Eastwood directed a pair of war dramas that stood as companion pieces. The first, "Flags of Our Fathers," based on the 2000 book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, was a contemplative and violent dramatization of the Battle of Iwo Jima, told from the perspective of the seven American soldiers who famously raised an American flag to signify their battlefield victory. The raising of the flag was captured on film by the Pulitzer-winning photographer Joe Rosenthal, and his picture served as the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington DC. Eastwood's film climaxed with Rosenthal's taking of the picture.
"Flags of Our Fathers" was released on October 20, and its companion, "Letters from Iwo Jima" was released on December 20. "Letters" also detailed the events of the Battle of Iwo Jima, but from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. Ken Watanabe gave an excellent performance as real-life General Tadamichi Kuribayashi,...
"Flags of Our Fathers" was released on October 20, and its companion, "Letters from Iwo Jima" was released on December 20. "Letters" also detailed the events of the Battle of Iwo Jima, but from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. Ken Watanabe gave an excellent performance as real-life General Tadamichi Kuribayashi,...
- 12/29/2022
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Longtime Hollywood literary agent Mickey “The Cowboy” Freiberg died yesterday at his West Los Angeles home after a three-year battle with brain cancer, his family said. He was 72. Freiberg represented numerous award-winning clients throughout a 40-plus-year career, including the late Budd Schulberg who won a screenwriting Oscar for 1954′s On The Waterfront, author Homer Hickam whose book Rocket Boys became the basis for the 1999 film October Sky, and Ron Powers, who co-authored Flags Of Our Fathers, the book on which the 2006 Clint Eastwood-directed war film was based. He also represented Joe Pistone, the former FBI special agent who worked undercover as Donnie Brasco, The Bonanno Family (Mafia Marriage) and the late Bill Bonnano, co-author of The Good Guys with David Fisher. One of Freiberg’s proudest projects was the David Permut-produced film Youth In Revolt, based on the novel written by C.D. Payne and brought to Permut by...
- 12/8/2012
- by THE DEADLINE TEAM
- Deadline TV
J. Edgar opens in theaters this Friday and it is the 33rd film directed by Clint Eastwood. Beginning with the thriller Play Misty For Me in 1971, Eastwood has directed westerns, action films, comedies, and dramas. From the very early days of his career, Eastwood had been frustrated by directors insisting that scenes be re-shot multiple times and perfected, and when he began as a director in 1971, he made a conscious attempt to avoid any aspects of directing he had been indifferent to as an actor. As a result, Eastwood is renowned for his efficient film directing and to reduce filming time and to keep budgets under control.
As seen through the eyes of Hoover himself, J. Edgar explores the personal and public life and relationships of a man who could distort the truth as easily as he upheld it during a life devoted to his own idea of justice, often...
As seen through the eyes of Hoover himself, J. Edgar explores the personal and public life and relationships of a man who could distort the truth as easily as he upheld it during a life devoted to his own idea of justice, often...
- 11/9/2011
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
7. 7.Letters From Iwo Jima
When Clint Eastwood announced that while he would be making the film version of Flags Of Our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers he then stated that he would also be working on a film which would tell the story of the battle from the Japanese side called Letters From Iwo Jima. this news caught many filmgoers by surprise. This major World War II battle would be brought to the screens twice and the great All-American director Clint Eastwood would devote one version showing the view of our Pacific enemy. Not many thought he could pull this off, but Flags and Letters opened within months of each other in 2006 and while both enjoyed terrific notices, some critics and academy members thought that Letters was the superior film.
Letters From Iwo Jima focuses on the weeks leading up to and the days after the allied forces...
When Clint Eastwood announced that while he would be making the film version of Flags Of Our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers he then stated that he would also be working on a film which would tell the story of the battle from the Japanese side called Letters From Iwo Jima. this news caught many filmgoers by surprise. This major World War II battle would be brought to the screens twice and the great All-American director Clint Eastwood would devote one version showing the view of our Pacific enemy. Not many thought he could pull this off, but Flags and Letters opened within months of each other in 2006 and while both enjoyed terrific notices, some critics and academy members thought that Letters was the superior film.
Letters From Iwo Jima focuses on the weeks leading up to and the days after the allied forces...
- 10/19/2010
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Malpaso Prods./Amblin Entertainment production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis
Based on the book by: James Bradley with Ron Powers
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Co-producer: Tim Moore
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
John Bradley: Ryan Phillippe
Rene Gagnon: Jesse Bradford
Ira Hayes: Adam Beach
Keyes Beech: John Benjamin Hickey
Bud Gerber: John Slattery
Mike Strank: Barry Pepper
Ralph Ignatowski: Jamie Bell
Hank Hansen: Paul Walker
Running time -- 132 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Malpaso Prods./Amblin Entertainment production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis
Based on the book by: James Bradley with Ron Powers
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Co-producer: Tim Moore
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
John Bradley: Ryan Phillippe
Rene Gagnon: Jesse Bradford
Ira Hayes: Adam Beach
Keyes Beech: John Benjamin Hickey
Bud Gerber: John Slattery
Mike Strank: Barry Pepper
Ralph Ignatowski: Jamie Bell
Hank Hansen: Paul Walker
Running time -- 132 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/10/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."...
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."...
- 10/9/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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