Flags of our Fathers (2006, R)

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Grade: C+

Clint Eastwood’s war epic, Flags of our Fathers, is not only about the six men who rose the flag at Iwo Jima: John Bradley, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, Mike Strank, Harlon Block, and Franklin Sousley, but about the real heroes of the battle:  the men who died, or in a better word, sacrificed their lives for that little speck of an island.  Eastwood is a very accustomed motion picture director who provides vigorous energy into most of his projects, and since the true story supplied here is so uniquely powerful, Flags of our Fathers should easily have been a complete tour de force as an artwork of cinema.  At least, that’s what I was expecting. 

Unfortunately, Eastwood unwisely complicates things by turning Flags of our Fathers into a composite series of flashbacks (to the point that we can’t tell what the real story is and which are the flashbacks), rather than the clear-cut, straightforward story it effortlessly should have been.  I was completely engrossed in the book of the same name, written by James Bradley (son of John), but that was because it was uncomplicated in its portrait of its well-researched story.  The book moved at a steady pace, garnering loads of background information on each of the individual characters, but what’s most important is that the book told the story as it should have been: clear-cut and straightforward.  Therefore, I am more than sorry to report that the movie and the book are so different from each other, that it is somewhat difficult to call the film a visual interpretation of the book. 

On the other hand, Eastwood masterfully recreates the Battle of Iwo Jima itself, and the amphibious landing scene deserves comparison to the well recognized half-hour Omaha Beach sequence that made Saving Private Ryan so legendary.  We unsparingly witness thousands of men load onto the black sands of Iwo Jima, but it is only when the beach is full that the Japanese open fire, cutting down swathes of young American boys.  One moment, a soldier fires his rifle at a Japanese pillbox, and the next his blown-off head has landed beside another young lad you we assume will witness a similar fate.  Or take it, for instance, when Strank is ripped apart by friendly fire and dies in his men’s arms.  These gruesome images are crucial, in all respects, to the film, as without them, we might not have believed that the real Battle for Iwo Jima was as bad as it was. 

The bulk of the film concentrates on the bond tour of the three surviving flag-raisers: Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes, but these scenes are stagnant in the emotion they were attempting to express.  The scene where Hayes falls into the arms of the mother of a fallen buddy was expected, as is the scene where all three of the men articulate their disrespect for the bond tour itself, stating that the real heroes are the men who died at Iwo Jima.

Eastwood followed Flags of our Fathers with the much-superior Letters from Iwo Jima; a film that, for all its profundity into battle, I would say deserves to take its own position among the superlative war films of our time.   Flags of our Fathers easily could have been that superlative war film of our time, but that fact is that it’s watered down by the disconnected narrative.  There are instances that oblige the means of why we should not go to war, and the potent story here deserves recognition in the history books, but even as completed by such a talented director like Eastwood, Flags of our Fathers is not entirely successful in providing the fluent gratitude that all the boys who fought at Iwo Jima urgently should have received.  C+