Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 192
Fresh: 140 | Rotten: 52
Flags of Our Fathers is both a fascinating look at heroism, both earned and manufactured, and a well-filmed salute to the men who fought at the battle of Iwo Jima.
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 45
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 10
Flags of Our Fathers is both a fascinating look at heroism, both earned and manufactured, and a well-filmed salute to the men who fought at the battle of Iwo Jima.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 246,567
Clint Eastwood's adaptation of the non-fiction book Flags of Our Fathers concerns the lives of the men in the famous picture of soldiers raising the American flag over Iwo Jima during that historic WWII battle. Battle scenes are intercut with footage of three of the soldiers - played by Ryan Phillipe, Jesse Bradford, and Adam Beach -- who survived the battle going on a goodwill tour of the United States in order to sell war bonds. Many evening they are forced to reenact their famous pose,
Oct 20, 2006 Wide
Feb 6, 2007
$33.6M
Paramount
All Critics (199) | Top Critics (47) | Fresh (146) | Rotten (52) | DVD (34)
Eastwood's two-film project is one of the most visionary of all efforts to depict the reality and meaning of battle.
Flags of Our Fathers is an accomplished, stirring, but, all in all, rather strange movie.
[Flags] fits into Eastwood's late-in-life agenda -- to make violence, even in self-defense, seem soul-killing, and to expose the gulf between reality and myth. After this, how can we ever again make our peace with the iconography of war?
It feels disrespectful to say it, but this kind of war movie, like war itself, is starting to feel sickeningly familiar.
The full weight of a lifetime's experience has been brought to bear in the unobtrusive staging, the delicate score (by Eastwood himself), and a thoughtful, honest accounting of World War II's bloodiest and most iconic battle.
If the larger vision in Flags is somewhat out of focus, there are many small glimpses and grace notes that show Eastwood's well-developed sense of the particular in revealing a larger truth.
Possibly the richest testament Hollywood has yet made about the paroxysm of World War II ... an astounding movie on every level, not the least of which is its common humanity.
Sequences fade into the pack and make it difficult to differentiate one player from the others, much less remember them after the lights go up.
A human-sized contemplation of propaganda and fame
The film strives mightily to make some sort of affecting emotional epic about a bit of history that it itself acknowledges is actually footnote-worthy.
A harrowing look at the truth behind a U.S. icon.
The film is confirmation of Paul Haggis's predilection for exploitation and easy sentimentality.
Flags of Our Fathers tells the true story behind the famous flag-raising photograph from WWII. Fascinating in a History Channel way, it's somewhat weakened by a confusing narrative...
Witness to a great director's vision being slowly strangled by the work of a hired hack.
The two-disc HD-DVD release of Flags of Our Fathers includes a set of sharp looking featurettes created in high definition.
Reminds us of the great damage that can be done to society's most vulnerable by those blustering war mongers who are so very far away from the combat they are inciting.
carefully dismantling one heroic archetype only to replace it with another, more nuanced one
Mission Accomplished. I thought it was pretty damn good. Sometimes Eastwood is most un-subtle, making his points two and three times over - but I was definitely caught up in the narrative of the reluctant "heroes". Neither the most original, nor the most coherent war movie: it feels like what it is - a
April 2, 2007Super Reviewer
A true masterpiece this was. Flags of Our Fathers was nothing more than terrific. There were moments when we smiled, teared up, and were in shock. The war scenes were detailed and realistic. And the story was a true work of genius, I loved it. True, the movie was confusing at times but in the need it pulls
April 5, 2011
Super Reviewer
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