Flags of Our Fathers

"Every jackass thinks he knows what war is, especially those who haven't been in one."

I can't say I was all that interested in Flags of Our Fathers, but I keep hearing that Letters from Iwo Jima is great, and I figured since they're "companion pieces" I might as well watch them in order. And since the latter comes out on DVD in a couple weeks, it seemed like a good time to check this one out.

They way Flags was promoted, it seemed like a fairly run-of-the-mill war movie. And it certainly has its share of brutal battle sequences. But it's really about survivor's guilt, and the contrast between the public face of heroism and the reality of war. The main characters were in the famous photograph raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and are given a hero's welcome. They are used for a promotional campaign for war bonds and treated like celebrities, but the men who died get no fanfare at all.

I really like Clint Eastwood as a director. He's not Martin Scorsese, but he gets good performances out of actors and doesn't let anything get in the way of the story. A few parts were derivative of Saving Private Ryan, but I guess if you're going to borrow from someone for a war movie, that's a good choice, and occasionally he makes his points forcefully when subtlety might do better (a shot of blood-red sauce poured on an ice cream mold of soldiers lingered a tad too long, for example).

Another odd thing about the promotion for this movie was that I don't think I ever knew who was in it. Not that it has an all-star cast, but Ryan Phillipe certainly has some fans. I'm not one of them, but this is easily the best I've ever seen him. Adam Beach, who played a similar role in Windtalkers, which I hated, was actually good here.

The only major problem I had was that the structure of the movie was a little too complex. The timeline bounced between the battle, the PR effort after the fact, and the recent past with a man assembling the stories. I don't see what the more recent timeline brought to the table that couldn't have been accomplished as a sort of epilogue, which would've simplified the rest of the story.

Otherwise, it was a pretty enjoyable film, and I'm looking forward to Letters from Iwo Jima.