Flags of Our Fathers

Flags of Our Fathers
Studio: Dreamworks
Rated: R
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, Jamie Bell, Ben Walker
Director: Clint Eastwood
WorkNameSort: Flags of Our Fathers
Our Rating: 4.50
Marketed as a sweetly patriotic homage to the bravery of the Iwo Jima soldiers, Flags of Our Fathers is a character-rich dissection of propaganda, loyalty and the visceral brutality of war. Clint Eastwood’s direction is unstinting in presenting the film’s primary philosophy, namely that these ‘heroesâ?� were frightened young men who served as little more than cannon fodder for the government for whom they were fighting. Their only ‘heroismâ?� was that they kept themselves and their compatriots alive in unimaginably horrible circumstances. In telling the story of three of the men pictured in the legendary flag-raising photo from Iwo Jima (and the experiences they had as wartime fund-raising photo props), Eastwood doesn’t diminish the importance of what they did, he humanizes it. Thanks to an excellent script by Paul Haggis (based on the book by William Broyles Jr.), the characters are rendered richly and honestly, further emphasizing the film’s powerful impact.

This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2006.