Flags of Our Fathers

I have a love / hate relationship with Clint Eastwood as a director. On the one hand, I think he has an amazing gift for pulling the absolute best performance out of any actor. On the other, I think he tends to be a lazy storyteller, relying too heavily on those actors. Both his gifts and his flaws are on display in Flags - a moving anti-war film that works despite choppy editing and poor story structure.

Flags of Our Fathers isn't about the battle of Iwo Jima, it's about the famous photo of the flag being raised on Mount Suribachi. The photograph, taken by Joe Roesenthal on the fifth day of the siege on the island, was on the wire service around the world with 18 hours of being taken, and became an icon of victory for Americans. It also launched the six ordinary soldiers caught raising a replacement flag (the first raised was coveted by a high ranking officer) into a weird superstardom. The three who survive long enough to become "the heroes of Iwo Jima" are cast into a propaganda circus, and struggle to make sense of the horrors of it all - war and war machine.

Eastwood gets his performances, most notably from Ryan Phillipe and Adam Beach - who's teary, tender moments are heartbreaking. But it's hard to follow the story as he jumps from narrator to narrator. I got the drift in the end, and it's a good one - that soldiers don't fight wars and become heroes for a cause or even for their country... they fight for the men they eat with, their friends, their mentors. For all it's flaws, this movie puts Saving Private Ryan to shame. Official website (with some nifty history) here.