Flags of Our Fathers: Movie, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Clint Eastwood’s new World War II movie, “Flags of Our Fathers,” is what the recent World War I drama “Fly Boys” should have been. It nixes cheap sensationalism to cut to the core of war's grisly realities--from the battlefield straight through to Washington’s public relations machines.

In "Flyboys," Tony Bill's approach was to gloss over the harder edges of those realities. He ignored today's current climate and made a war movie one could watch in relative comfort, perhaps with a soft drink and a bucket of popcorn.

People are killed in his film, but because the emphasis is on the sheen of its special effects and not on its two-dimensional characters, you never feel their loss the way you should. The film was designed to be a patriotic powerhouse, though it has the soul of a video game. "Flags," on the other hand, is grittier. It doesn’t eschew patriotism--far from it--though it is laced with the commercially less-appealing sting of cynicism, which gives it added interest and depth.

Typical of Eastwood, whose stoic, no-nonsense cool assists the movie even if its fragmented structure doesn't, "Flags of Our Fathers" is focused on its characters first, the rousing backdrop of war second.

The film is concerned with the power of a singular image--Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of six unidentifiable men lifting an American flag high atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. It was an image that gave hope to a nation fatigued and nearly broke--on every level--by war. Recognizing in that hope an opportunity for propaganda, some in Washington convinced the photo's three survivors to make public appearances around the country to raise money for the war bond effort.

Those men were Navy corpsman John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) and Marines Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), all of whom were in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time, as the movie explores) when Rosenthal snapped the photo.

As written by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis ("Crash," "Million Dollar Baby") from the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, "Flags" becomes about their inward struggle to deal with the heroism cast upon them. For Rene, it's easiest--he enjoys the fame. For Doc, it's difficult, though Ira suffers most--not only because he believes he doesn't deserve the adulation, but because, as a Native American, he counters the crush of racism at every turn.

Beyond the performances, which are good, the battle scenes are masterful, particularly in an early scene that evokes the Omaha Beach landing in Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan."

For Eastwood (whose film is co-produced by Spielberg), the beach in question runs along the black sands of Iwo Jima, where the hail of Japanese gunfire carves a forest of flesh as the men come off the boats to fight. The action and the carnage is unrelenting, with Eastwood hammering away at his soldiers and at his audience. What he achieves is a heightened sense of realism that fills our senses to capacity until it bends us backward into surrealism. The effect doesn’t thrill the way lesser war films do. Instead, it humbles.

Grade: B+