Flags of Our Fathers showed the American side of the battle to conquer the island Iwo Jima, which was a very important island for strategic reasons as it would give the Americans a base to start their attack on Japan. Letters from Iwo Jima tells the other side of the story and focusses on how the Japanese prepared to protect their island.
The big flaw that Flags had was that the story wasn’t very focussed as it showed several timelines mixed through each other. Because of this the movie was did not have as much impact as I expected. Letters from Iwo Jima is a lot better at telling its story as it mostly shows the activities that happened on Iwo Jima. There are some flashbacks for some of the characters, but these effectively add a back story to them, which makes you care for them. This results in a bigger impact once the fighting starts. If you already know the end result if you have seen Flags you know what will happen to them and how difficult their situation is.
All dialog is in Japanese and the movie effectively manages to show the other side of the battle, sometimes using scenes which were also shown in Flags (in my opinion they could have used this a bit more).
The acting is very good and Ken Watanabe (who many will remember from Inception) is excellent as general Kuribayashi who is desperately trying to motivate his men, despite the difficult situation and the many setbacks.
Although you really don’t need to see Flags of Our Fathers to “enjoy” this movie it is better to watch both of them. Of the two movies this is the better one as its story is more focussed.
Score: 8
I really liked this movie. Far superior to Flags of our Father IMO and a badly underrated war film. I read the book from which this is based on and it’s actually accurate in that regard.
Yes it was. This movie really managed to show the fear that these soldiers had and the strange things people do when they start to panick. It shows that war is not just about being heroic, but that there is a very big range of emotions.
You know I have never seen this one!! I know right, SHOCKER!! I even had it on HDDVD for ages, but never got around to it. Getting a Second World War film on in front of my wife is pretty hard if I am honest.
I feel sad about it and I really want to watch it.
One day, one day
Thanks for the cool review!!
C
Well, I only saw it recently for the first time, so no shame in not having seen it 🙂 You should watch it though. I have lots of unopened DVDs as well, so I know the problem.
While “Letters from Iwo Jima” is truly a great achievement is several ways, the script is powerful, the production is superb, all the technical departments almost perfected their jobs, there is some really good acting as well, and Eastwood’s touch as a director is very visible, and its beautiful, it flaws almost flawlessly in this regard.
Well, what’s wrong then? It simply lacks what makes it a really interesting movie. “Letters” starts with a present day scene of excavators digging up remains of the war in Iwo Jima, and finding letters in a cave that were written by Japanese soldiers and officers during the war on Iwo Jima island, it then travels back in time to WWII and story revolves around those whom their letters were found during the dawn of the American invasion on that island. Slowly, the movie loses its grip over its audience, becoming something closer to an audio book, and survival becomes a repetitive process!!!
Everyone seem to be praising the film for being told from the other side, and its true you don’t see that many American film makers do that, and although the film didn’t just speak Japanese, it lived and breathed Japanese, it couldn’t escape the limited framework of Hollywood, this is very visible through the “good” characters, all the good, honest or lovable Japanese characters were either American sympathizers who lived in the US for a while and kept saying how a great nation the US is, or are Japanese people that do not care for the Imperial system and would not mind handing over the island to their rival Americans. On the other hand, all Japanese loyalists were mean American haters. Even the resolution of the strict Imperial soldiers was that the Americans were not as evil as they were told. But still, everyone was very fond of the fact that the movie was told completely from a Japanese point of view. However, just because Eastwood is an American film maker making a Japanese-point-of-view movie, doesn’t make the film any better than what it really is, the film’s ratings seem to be getting higher just because there is an American film maker behind it and I disagree, it is what it is regardless who the people behind it were.
The film was also highly praised as a companion film to “Flags”, and while together they form a great duo, on its own, “Letters” does not achieve greatness.
Why did Eastwood and Spielberg decide to make “Letters from Iwo Jima” this calm instead of making an adrenaline-pumping film? My guess is that they did not care about the average audience and the commercial success as much as they did care for the story’s integrity.
Interesting thoughts about the film. It has been a couple of years since I saw it but I don’t think it needed to be an adrenaline pumping film and like the way it was shown.