Letters From Iwo Jima

"Letters From Iwo Jima"
Clint Eastwood, 2006

Clint Eastwood's film, "Flags of Our Fathers" (2006), followed a group of U.S. Marines during and after the horrific fight for the isolated island, Iwo Jima, in the Pacific Theater during World War II. "Letters From Iwo Jima," that film's companion piece, views the conflict from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers on the island. Undersupplied and understaffed, the troops do their best to prepare for the impending invasion by U.S. Marines under the island's new, resourceful Army commander, General Kuribayashi, who is played by the excellent actor Ken Watanabe.

Eastwood, in both of his films, does an excellent job at conveying the frightening and unforgiving nature of war - it's nearly impossible to distinguish between U.S. and Japanese soldiers in the midst of many brutal skirmishes, and soldiers on both sides are capable of acts of unspeakable cruelty and compassion. Both films, unfortunately, get waylaid by intrusive melodramatic passages and flashbacks, which I suspect are courtesy of Paul Haggis's - who wrote "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," both of which are films I dislike - typically sentimental script. While these sequences help to develop the characters, they cut in at all the wrong times - during the middle of battle - which interrupts the film's impeccably-crafted oppressive atmosphere.

Eastwood himself was never one for subtlety; take his cowboy in his excellent Western, "Unforgiven," who repeatedly tells, rather than shows us, the effects the death of his wife had on his outlook on life. The same thing applies here, though to an admittedly lesser extent as the conflict is often depicted graphically. Then again, such straight-forwardness is necessary in a film such as this, where the futile nature of this single battle, which took tens of thousands of lives, needs to be applied, equally, to both participants in the conflict.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 7/15/08, on Blu-ray Disc
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