> Flag of our Fathers

Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, Barry Pepper, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery.
Director: Clint Eastwood.


"Flags of Our Fathers" is the story of the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who raised a replacement flag on a stinking little island six-hundred miles south of Tokyo. An Associated Press photographer, who wasn't ready and was caught off guard, snapped a picture of them raising this seemingly unimportant second flag. He had no idea what he had just done.

That one picture is said to be the most reproduced picture in the history of photography.

Ryan Philippe (Crash) plays John "Doc" Bradley, a naval medic who becomes an overnight hero when he helps raise the flag on the third day of the Iwo Jima invasion. Aided by Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), Bradley is relieved of duty and assigned a different responsibility by the military -- to help sell war bonds to American civilians.
Championed as heroes and paraded across the country for a public eager to support their troops, the three men begin to question how much they actually did while on the battlefield. But as the pressure continues to weigh more heavily on their consciences, and a flood of memories remind them of their fallen comrades, they start to wonder: What does it truly mean to be a hero, and what if despite all of the parades and press and publicity, one cannot live up to that?

The bulk of "Flags of our Fathers" cuts back and forth between the tour and the men's flashbacks to the hellacious combat on Iwo, detailing the reality the survivors are haunted by, a reality that makes them powerfully uncomfortable with being lionized for their connection to what they consider to be a misleading picture.


The screenplay is beautfiul. The battle footage is appropriately suspenseful and often gory, and the shots of the vast armada that attacked the Japanese island are suitably awesome. But Eastwood chose to aestheticize the battle in a way that blunts its visceral impact. Color is drained from the images until a kind of steely, blue-gray version of the "This-Is-The-Past" sepia effect is achieved.

"Flags of Our Fathers" is a tremendous film about the very beginning of celebrity worship, and our need to invent and memorialize brave men. It is a deeply heartfelt and highly original war movie that takes time to get your head around.

Make sure you stick around for the credits, where Eastwood inserts plenty of photos of those people and places portrayed in the movie. It might have been the most emotional part of Flags Of Our Fathers.



P.S. - After Flags, Eastwood directed Letters From Iwo Jima, a feature that tells the story from the Japanese side. The film won’t be out till February, but one thing is for damn sure: Eastwood will do it his way. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the gold standard.