Though it's based on a non-fiction book, Flags of Our Fathers is too thinly imagined for naturalism, and when Eastwood squeezes the material for greater significance, it crumbles. The movie thus has the same failings as such life-of-the-company World War II movies as The Story of GI Joe (1945), which presented the everyday heroes as the essence of what-we're-fighting-for and reduced everything, men and ideals, to clichés. There is nothing in Flags of Our Fathers that feels as unsententiously lived as what we see the men undergoing in Pierre Schoendoerffer's The 317th Platoon (1965) or John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1987), combat pictures about the French and American experiences in Viet Nam in the '50s and '60s, respectively.
Under the apparent tutelage of Steven Spielberg (who co-produced this picture), Eastwood gives his battle scenes more immediacy than any action scenes have ever had in his other movies. (The special effects are superb and judiciously used.) But he blands it all out with his pedestrian storytelling, much as Spielberg tends to do in his "big" pictures. I grew up on my father's traumatized memories of being a teenaged combatant in the South Pacific during World War II and Eastwood's movie still left me cold. For this son of a bewildered ex-marine, the National World War II Memorial in Washington better expresses the traditionalist combination of awe and restraint that Eastwood misses here. It has on repeated visits provided a far more moving aesthetic experience than Flags of Our Fathers.
![The 317th Platoon [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31BB48SXBHL._SL120_.gif)
Article comments
1 - Triniman
Best review of this film that I have read. Well done.
2 - handyguy
I agree that the movie falls short, although I think you are too harsh on Eastwood's direction [he did make the powerful Unforgiven, after all, and parts of Mystic River had some of the same tidal pull]. And Adam Beach as Ira Hayes gives one of the year's most moving performances.
I believe the problems are mostly in the script...confusing structure, blandly lacking in a forceful point of view. It's always hard to tell a 'real life' story without fakey dramaturgy; if a writer does succeed in removing the falseness, what's left can feel middle-of-the-road and listless, which is what I think happens here.
3 - MCH
I thought the movie was a great tribute to the sacrifices our guys made for us there...saw it three times and felt it was better each time...Another good test was the fact that an Iwo vet whom I featured in a past column, thought it was good...So my view is, if it's good enough for someone who was THERE, it's good enough for me...
4 - MCH
"I grew up on my father's traumatized memories of being a teenaged combatant in the South Pacific during World War II and Eastwood's movie still left me cold. For this son of a bewildered ex-marine, the..."
BTW, there's no such thing as an EX-marine...
5 - Alan Dale
Thanks, Triniman.
6 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment, handyguy. Disagree with you about Unforgiven, which I commented on here, and to me Mystic River was unbearably self-serious and unenlightening. As for Adam Beach, while Ira may have been one of the year's most potentially moving roles, the performance was undermined by Eastwood's handling.
I agree that the problems arise mostly from the script, but Eastwood's literary culture is so very primitive that he can't help but make the script's problems the movie's problems. And it's not as if he were such a technical magician that there's some compensation in how he shoots even a bad script, as there has been with, say, Brian DePalma.
7 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comments, MCH. As for being an EX-marine, well, you didn't know my father, who was a rather disenchanted former serviceman. At the same time, as a person who always marks Pearl Harbor Day, I am highly conscious of the sacrifices this country has made to save the world from fascism, in World War II and currently. But Flags of Our Fathers is a movie, not an actual contribution to that noble effort. Thus, if an Iwo vet thinks Eastwood's movie does him honor, I don't even want to argue with his reaction, which must arise from all kinds of individual associations that I couldn't possibly share. But that's scarcely an aesthetic consideration--I'm a critic of movies not hearts.
8 - bonnietruax
whitch one is clints son
9 - shane
Thanks for the good review. I felt too that the movie failed. I also think it deserves a swift kick.
Most families have veterans, and so does mine. But there was condescension and conceit in his theme of there being no heroes, only what we make of them. Any serviceman I've talked to would think that is a little too smart-assed of clint. They all recalled those who couldn't measure up in battle and those who went beyond the call of duty - i guess that'd be heroes, clint - something you've had the luxury of being paid millions of portraying for many years...
10 - Alan Dale
Thanks for your comment, Shane. I especially like the last line, which gets at the weird hypocrisy of this kind of earnest, well-intentioned Hollywood moviemaking. From an artistic point of view, Eastwood's intentions, rather than his skill, mark the only difference b/w his prestige pictures and his conventional output. Since he doesn't have the mind or vision to live up to those intentions, I don't see any reason to give him points for what does me no good.