One of them jokes about dying of honourable dysentery.

And they have an advantage, they are told: that the US soldiers are less disciplined and allow emotions to interfere with their duty.Īn awareness of their mortality hangs heavily over the Japanese men as they barely subsist on a diet of weed soup. The soldiers are exhorted that each must kill 10 Americans before they themselves are killed. A massive US fleet is approaching from Saipan, and the defending forces on the island seem hopelessly outnumbered.Īt several points in the narrative, and from different perspectives, the film addresses the Japanese codes of honour, duty and dying for one's country. Opening on a tour of Iwo Jima as the Japanese forces prepare for the US onslaught, the film establishes the geography of this strategic outpost. Unlike its predecessor, Letters rarely moves off the island, and then only in flashbacks. Once again, the palette for the epic battle is aptly sombre, verging on monochrome as the soldiers make their way across black sand under grey skies. The language is different (the film is sub-titled in English) but the message is the same and powerfully delivered as the death toll soars on both sides, and the conflict is captured in all its chaos, cacophony, fear and mass destruction. As it explores the experiences of some reluctant heroes featured in the photograph, Flags takes on a melancholy tone suffused with disenchantment and tinged with bitterness.Įastwood's equally admirable companion film, Letters from Iwo Jima, observes that battle from the Japanese point of view. His arresting revisionist film punctures the myths built around that image, which became a potent symbol of triumph, hope and propaganda for the US. Reviewed - Letters from Iwo Jima: One of the most brutal battles of the second World War is explored from the losers' side in Clint Eastwood elegiac, moving drama, writes Michael DwyerĬLINT Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, released here two months ago, pivots on the iconic photograph of six US soldiers victoriously raising the Stars and Stripes atop the summit of Mount Suribach on the desolate Pacific island of Iwo Jima in February 1945.

Letters from iwo jima review