Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Running time: 132 minutes (2 hours, 12 minutes)
MPAA – R for sequences of graphic war violence and carnage and for language
COMPOSER/DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
WRITERS: William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis (based upon the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers)
PRODUCERS: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, and Robert Lorenz
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Tom Stern (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Joel Cox, A.C.E.
Academy Award nominee
WAR/HISTORY/DRAMA
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Paul Walker, Jamie Bell, Barry Pepper, John Benjamin Hickey, Robert Patrick, Neal McDonough, and Tom McCarthy
The subject of this movie review is Flags of Our Fathers, a 2006 war film from director Clint Eastwood. The film examines the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II and its aftermath from the point of view of American servicemen. The film is based upon the non-fiction book, Flags of Our Fathers, from authors James Bradley and Ron Powers and first published in 2000. Eastwood also composed the film’s score with assistance from his son, Kyle Eastwood, and Michael Stevens.
In Clint Eastwood’s film, Flags of Our Fathers, a son attempts to learn of his father’s World War II experiences by talking to the men who served with him and discovers that friendship and brotherhood meant more to the men than the war itself.
The son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy), knows that his father, John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), was in the famous photograph, “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,” which was taken by photographer Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945 and which became the most memorable photograph taking during WWII (as well as winning the Pulitzer Price for photography). The photograph depicted five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on the tiny island of Iwo Jima, and “Doc” Bradley was that corpsman (medical personnel). The battle for that tiny speck of black sand, which was barely eight square miles, would prove to be the tipping point in the Pacific campaign against the Japanese during the war.
Through the recollections of the WWII vets, the son hears harrowing tales of Iwo Jima, and for the first time learns what his father went through there. The military later returns “Doc” Bradley and the two other surviving flag-raisers, Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) to the U.S. and where they trio becomes props in the governments’ Seventh War Bond Drive. This particular bond drive is an attempt to raise desperately needed cash to finish fighting the war. However, Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes are uncomfortable with their celebrity and find themselves at odds with being America’s new heroes.
Flags of Our Fathers is the first of Clint Eastwood’s unique two-film take on the war movie. The second film, Letters from Iwo Jima, depicts the Japanese side of the war. Flags runs hot and cool – hot when Eastwood keeps the film on Iwo Jima and cool when the flag-raisers are back in America and dealing with public situations that make them uncomfortable. The narrative, like Billy Pilgrim, the hero of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, becomes unstuck in time, dancing back in forth in the wartime and post-war past, with an occasional foray into the present.
Flags of Our Fathers is at its best when Eastwood focuses on Iwo Jima and the veterans nightmarish flashbacks, in particularly “Doc” Bradley’s flashbacks while he’s on the bond drive tour. He transforms the horrors of war into a taut thriller, in which the monster of violent death stalks the Marines on the battlefield. Eastwood also makes his point at certain times with beautiful subtlety. In one scene, Ira Hayes (played by Adam Beach who is, like Hayes, a Native American) is refused service at a restaurant because the owner “doesn’t serve Indians.” After all of Hayes’ dedication, the routine bigotry he faces is stinging and heart-rending, and Eastwood captures that moment (and so many others where bigotry is as common as air) in an understated fashion that turns that quiet scene into a blunt object he slams into the viewer.
Flags is by no means perfect. It lacks any great performances, and Jesse Bradford and Beach can only deliver soft performances since their characters are so thin. “Doc” Bradley isn’t a stronger character, but Ryan Phillippe jumps between that haunted look or playing stoic, which gives Bradley more traction in the narrative. Still, Flags of Our Fathers proves that Clint Eastwood is truly a great movie director, and that even his missteps here can’t hide this engaging look at brotherhood on the battlefield and surviving after war.
7 of 10
A-
NOTES:
2007 Academy Awards: 2 nominations: “Best achievement in sound editing” (Alan Robert Murray, Bub Asman) and “Best achievement in sound mixing” (John T. Reitz, David E. Campbell, Gregg Rudloff, and Walt Martin)
2007 Golden Globes: 1 nomination: “Best Director-Motion Picture” (Clint Eastwood)
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Updated: Monday, November 11, 2013
The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.
No comments:
Post a Comment