Letters From Iwo Jima
Director: Clint Eastwood
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 3.0
Nicely done companion piece to Eastwood's portrait of a battle from the Americans' stand point - Flags of Our Fathers - and revealing much about the Japanese defense of the island (which essentially had them hiding inside the place via tunnels), their attitude towards honor and their own fears. Corrects the gross mistake of Flags by not playing games with the flashbacks - the entire movie is one long flashback - and also shows respect for the Japanese, although I'm a little nagged by the fact that the movie was made by Americans, and its Western bias may taint the facts. It's a lot more effectively morose and claustrophobic than Flags - which was too openly sentimental - and represents a different mindset: the Japanese, from the beginning, saw being called to fight as an immediate death sentence.
