All Critics (199)
|
Top Critics (41)
|
Fresh (188)
|
Rotten (18)
|
DVD (31)
Indirectly but cogently comment on our experiences of other movies. Having Japanese soldiers as heroes allows us to reconsider the didacticism we've been handed in the past.
The proper way to appreciate Letters and Flags is to treat them as complimentary halves of the same epic movie, a Godfather war epic. One half is plainly more ambitious than the other, but both have virtues that distinguish them.
Where Flags heaved its characters through war and psychic trauma without first allowing us all to get acquainted, Letters takes such care with its protagonists that they awaken and descend from the screen.
Eastwood is now 76, and Letters has the feel of a movie made by a man of experience. Almost stately in its tone, Letters reflects the wisdom of living; it's interested in observing how men behave when they know they can't win.
Letters is a work of whetted craft and judgment, tempered by Eastwood's years of life, moviemaking and the potent tango of the two. It is the work of a mature filmmaker willing to entertain the true power of the cinema.
Humanizing our old adversaries doesn't erase their war crimes, and Eastwood doesn't whitewash the brutality of Japanese militarism. His point is that the Emperor's infantrymen were as much the victims of the Japanese war machine as the GIs they fought.
Modern-day echoes of being snookered into a bad war aren't lost on Clint Eastwood, and "Letters from Iwo Jima" delivers an overwhelmingly powerful eulogy for the death of righteousness in combat on either side of the line.
Not an anti-war tract or a glorification but, rather, a fair consideration of humanity that exists within the inhumanity of armed conflict.
Eastwood's cinema is one of resolutely moral images
The most important film of 2006 was Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. In 20 years Letters from Iwo Jima will be a classic.
Eastwood offers a profound perspective on WWII.
Eastwood's direction is a thing of beauty, blending unblinking ferocity with fragile delicacy.
Both technical grace and an efficient ensemble smooth over some...clunky plotting.
A fine, textured study of war, one that considers the strategic side as well as the human side without sacrificing either.
Telling the story of the famous WWII battle from a Japanese perspective, Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima is a companion piece to his own Flags of our Fathers. And, to a certain degree, it's a better film.
Watching the film, I had admiration for what Eastwood and his writers were attempting, but I remained at arm's length. I'm not entirely sure why I could not buy into the film.
Much as already been made about the pride and honor of the Japanese, but as a people they have rarely, if ever, been depicted as fully human characters in American war movies. It's amazing to think what Clint Eastwood has done here.
Warner's two-disc set offers up several excellent features ...
... Eastwood takes this film out of the realm of a typical war picture to illuminate the boundless nature of the human spirit, which extends far beyond race and nationality.
In Letters, the glossy romanticism of history crumbles before our very eyes.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
