Letters from Iwo Jima

I was really looking forward to this second part of the Iwo Jima saga as envisioned by Clint Eastwood. I thought it was the coolest idea - to shoot two movies looking at the same battle from the opposing viewpoints. This one was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and won for Best Sound Editing. Even more I was looking forward to the story as told by the losers... after all, twenty thousand Japanese soldiers died on that little chunk of rock and held off the overwhelming American forces for 40 endless days. The stuff of epic...

I was HUGELY disappointed in this film. Where do I begin? I'll start with the writing (best screenplay?) which I found so loaded with stereotypes as to be almost comical and so obviously written by an American; her surname may be Japanese but it is very clear that her native culture invented McDonald's. There are the repetitive battle scenes straight out of Flags of our Fathers with little change in perspective, all cleverly tied together so that the two movies mirror each other - neither offering any insight into the other. And after a half hour of reading subtitles of uninspired dialogue and watching even talented actors like Ken Watanabe overact all over themselves to give this mess meaning, I was ready to commit hari kari.

Again, Clint Eastwood is a lazy storyteller. I guess I understand shooting battle footage once for the sake of the budget, but could we have altered the camera angles or something? He used the same soundtrack, for heavens sake. Maybe I could have been kinder if I had seen this movie first... but I doubt that there was a need to make it at all. At least Flags had a point. Website here.