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Release Date: October 20, 2006

Clint Eastwood, at age 76, may be in the middle of the high period of his career. His splendid Mystic River was followed up by the Oscar winning Million Dollar Baby, and several others of his recent films have been quite good as well as varied in genre and style. With Flags of our Fathers Clint Eastwood has crafted a WWII movie which has some conservatives crying treason. For my part I admire his goals but wish I had enjoyed the movie more.

Everyone has seen the famous picture of the soldiers on Iwo Jima struggling to erect a United States flag, but few know the story behind it. Flags of our Fathers tells the story of the picture as it was taken, as it became a famous image overnight, and what happened to the young men involved. All further details are more appropriately left for the viewer’s discovery.

As I said, I admire what Eastwood attempts to do with this movie, and that is simply this: to be honest and to set the record straight. War’s first casualty is the truth, and WWII was no exception. To deny this or to believe that somehow one’s own nation has a pristine track record is to engage in self deception. Though many have decried Mr. Eastwood’s latest opus, I don’t believe that he is any less patriotic for refusing to be fooled by his government.

But the movie is a frustrating one. It is frustrating because the noble goal is carried by a lesser vehicle. It is frustrating because there are glimpses of a better film that often shine through. But mixed in with these finer moments and often overpowering them are some serious flaws which hold the entire endeavor back.

It begins with a series of opening scenes that run past us without really explaining much. An old man falls down and calls out “Where is he?” Another old man is being interviewed (interviewed by the same man who came to the aid of the first old man? Yes, but that’s not made very clear at first). Many different soldiers are paraded before us. We hop back and forth in time. We are treated to scenes of people seeing the photo for the first time, from a woman who is convinced she can recognize the posterior of her son in the photo to the president himself. And in all this, no main character is identified. Indeed, several characters who we soon will learn are actually quite minor are treated like they are going to be leading roles. This entire opening section is simply too disorienting.

The film finally settles down a bit and begins to tell the story of three surviving men from the picture as they tour the US as heroes anointed by the press interspersed with frequent flashbacks to the fighting on the island. Probably the best points in the film come as the young soldiers struggle with the deception that they are a part of. But even this part of the film suffers from a lack of cohesion between the US tour and the Iwo Jima fighting. It seemed to me that too often the movie jumped back and forth between the two without some point tying them together, such as a spoken phrase which reminds a soldier of an experience on the island, or a moment of d©j  vu, or perhaps an underlying theme like a moral difficulty which ties in with something that happened on the island. The movie generally flips back and forth between the two because the story needs to advance, nothing more.  Though this is not always the case I felt that there could have been greater cohesion between the two time frames.

When the story behind the picture is at last told we linger on for a very long time, following the characters around after the movie could have, should have and with better judgment would have ended but has not. This seems to be an ever more prevalent problem with movies nowadays: they do not know when to end and may miss as many as a half dozen good opportunities to do so. The little bit of mystery is solved, the momentum of the tour is gone, the character arcs are complete; for crying out loud let’s not spend so much time wrapping up!

To make matters worse, the narration, at first handled by the old man in the interview who took the photo itself so many years ago, is now taken over by the son of the man who falls at the beginning and who has been interviewing the photographer. He starts telling us about how he got involved in researching his dad’s role in it all, as if all along he had been the main character, or at least the only narrator. Then several minutes are spent with overly melodramatic father-son moments that feel as if they belong in a different movie, a movie we obviously have not seen or else we might have gotten to know the son better and therefore would be more touched by his sorrow at the passing of his dad.

The effort is not exactly wasted. It is well filmed and the acting, with a few exceptions where troop camaraderie did not come across realistically, was generally good. Some pretty visuals pop up now and then and the production values are up to standards (though the images are shot in such a way as to make them seem washed out versions of starker originals. I never was entirely won over by this decision).  Also, the battle scenes are probably the best I have seen since Saving Private Ryan. All in all however, the film did not meet with expectations.

The Upside: I applaud the intentions of the director. The scenes were crafted well enough.

The Downside: The movie does not stay focused. It flits about at the beginning and wanders around at the end with a middle that, though somewhat solid, could have been re-conceived for better effect.

On the Side: Since Mr. Eastwood’s intent is to set history straight, we should help him in his effort. During the film a silky Japanese voice is heard over the radio trying to demoralize the American troops. Though the name is never mentioned the intent is apparent. Let us be very clear about this: THERE WAS NO TOKYO ROSE! Just the army’s version of an urban legend circulating after the war and a poor young Japanese-American disc jockey who agreed to claim that she was the non-existent Tokyo Rose in exchange for money from reporters who, upon discovering that the rumors were false, didn’t want the actual facts to get in the way of reporting a compelling story.

Final Grade: C+