Posted: 10/22/2006

Flags of Our Fathers

(2006)

by Clint Fletcher

Since Saving Private Ryan, every WWII movie released by Hollywood just seems bland and unexciting (by comparison at least). This year’s Flags of Our Fathers is no exception.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s an exceptionally well-made film (shit, it’s Clint Eastwood, after all), but even with all its high points, it’s nowhere near the level of filmmaking of Saving Private Ryan. But alas, this is about a different story—the war on Iwo Jima. Needing more money to continuously fund the war, the U.S. government selects three B-movie actors (duh, I mean, soldiers) to tour the country persuading the people. These soldiers were all directly involved (or thought to be) with the raising of the flag in Iwo Jima. The movie juggles three different plot lines—the touring of the three soldiers, their flashbacks of fighting in the war, and a future plot line with one of the soldier’s sons. The sporadic juggling of these three plot lines make the film somewhat hard to follow, especially with the time line of events and when they occurred.

Another major problem Flags suffers from is character development. With the exception of Adam Beach, I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody in this movie, and when some of them died, I could’ve cared less.

Furthermore, since there wasn’t much character development for the leads in the film, there sure as hell wasn’t any development for the supporting characters. As a matter of fact, all of them kind of looked the same, which made some scenes even more confusing. But at least the action scenes were well done. Again, they’re nothing compared to Saving Private Ryan’s standards, but for a big movie such as this to be helmed by Eastwood, a predominantly “smaller” director, I must give him props for taking on such a big movie. Not to mention this was kind of long and its only the first installment of a two-part story (Letters From Iwo Jima, told from the Japanese perspective, is due in February).

Even though I didn’t enjoy Flags of Our Fathers as much as I wanted to, I will admit I have somewhat of a biased opinion. I usually don’t enjoy war movies, and again, my love for Ryan’s Privates (duh, I mean, Private Ryan) may have definitely interfered with my viewing of this flick. Ah well. At least it wasn’t Pearl Harbor or Hart’s War… Right?

If you’re a history buff or just want to learn more about Iwo Jima, I’d recommend this flick. I’m sure it will be used to teach youngsters about WWII in the future.

Clint Fletcher is a film critic and filmmaker living in the Midwest.

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