Flags of Our Fathers

“A picture speaks a thousand words.” This expression sums up the central theme of Flags of Our Fathers, director Clint Eastwood’s take on the battle of Iwo Jima and its effect on three of its participants. John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) were forever immortalized by the legendary photograph showing the flag raising on Suribachi Hill. The film is less about the actual battle than it is about this photograph and the cross country tour made by the three surviving soldiers who appeared in it (there were originally six). Touted by the media as “war heroes,” the three men encouraged citizens to buy war bonds and tried to improve morale on the home front; however, this government sponsored publicity stunt has a very different effect on each of them. Gagnon, who did very little in the actual battle, seizes the opportunity and enjoys his new found celebrity status to the fullest. Hayes, a Native American, believes the whole thing is a farce and drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Bradley is the moral center of the film, and it is his son who is piecing the story together through interviews with other Iwo Jima survivors. The film is well done in many respects. It has a wonderfully subdued look, the non-linear editing works very effectively, and the acting (particularly by Phillippe and Beach) is superb. Unfortunately, it lags tremendously in the final half-hour, becoming overly sentimental and spending too much time telling us what happens to each of the characters. A few lines of text before the end credits would have sufficed. Nonetheless, Eastwood appears to be on a roll, and this movie certainly wets the appetite for his next film Letters from Iwo Jima—due out in February—which details the same battle, only from the Japanese perspective.

Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis.
Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Barry Pepper, Jaime Bell and Paul Walker.

Rated R for sequences of graphic war violence and carnage, and for language. 137 min.

***½ so says The Fish