Review of Flags of Our Fathers

I gave Flags of our Fathers 3 stars for an authentic period piece, but that's all. I love war movies because I love history, and history, unfortunately, is a record of mankind's wars. I am also a disabled vet, and I am interested in the many perspectives on war and soldiering that have come out of Hollywood. I thought Saving Private Ryan was the high-water mark of Hollywood war movies. Unfortunately, Flags of our Fathers was everything Saving Private Ryan was not. First, Eastwood and Haggis failed to give the audience a character or characters we could sympathize or identify with, even the very compelling character of Ira Hayes. None of the quality actors involved in this movie had a chance to make their characters seem real because of the jerky, cut and splice sequences from the battle scenes to the bond tour to present time and other unknown times in between. For most of the movie, I didn't know who most of the characters were either in real life or in the movie. Second, the computer generated battle scenes of Iwo Jima were ... well, obviously computer generated. Third, the music score, which is crucial to mood and movement of a war movie, was actually a distraction to the movie. Fourth, Eastwood and Haggis constantly digressed away from the tag-line of movie with so many plots and sub-plots that at the end of the movie, I was mentally exhausted and just wanted the movie to be over. Fifth, the war gore in Flags of our Fathers seemed to be more gratuitous than realistic, like a bad frat-house Halloween party. And finally, Eastwood and Haggis seemed to have had a political ax to grind and sacrificed some historical accuracy including the deaths of two of the flag raisers and Ira Hayes, who didn't die in a farm yard on a sunny day. Apparently, I'm not the only one who will not recommend this movie to others. My wife and I went on a Saturday night at a prime time showing, and even though the theater complex was as crowded as usual, the theater for Flags of our Fathers was barely half full and most of them were over age 60. And of this group, there was very little comment, positive or negative, at the end of the movie.