This looks damn good. A few threads here on FR are bemoaning another anti-US anti-military movie, but I don't get that from this.
Only time will tell - I'll reserve judgment till I have my tub of popcorn...
Variety has a review (yes, it's Variety, but the only one I've seen so far):
Conventional wisdom suggests directors slow down as they reach a certain age (Eastwood is now 76), become more cautious, recycle old ideas, fall out of step with contemporary tastes, look a bit stodgy. Eastwood has impertinently ignored these options not only by undertaking by far his most expensive and logistically daunting picture, but by creating back-to-back bookend features offering contrasting perspectives on the same topic; the Japanese-language "Letters From Iwo Jima," showing the Japanese side in intimate terms, will be released by Warner Bros. next year.
....It is also a film about the so-called Greatest Generation that considers why its members are, or were, reticent to speak much about what they did in the war, to boast or consider themselves heroes.
(talking about the publicity tour the government sent them on after Iwo Jima) And once they've done their bit raising billions for the government, they're left on their own to put their lives back together. It's not an easy road, particularly for Hayes, who in one moving, genuinely Fordian moment, treks a long distance for a brief visit with the father of one of his fallen comrades.
Given this dramatic, wrenching arc, Hayes' story becomes the heart of the movie, and Beach, who previously played a Native American in the Pacific campaign in "Windtalkers," unquestionably takes the acting honors with it, delivering a full sense of the character's pain and sense of entrapment in an absurd situation. Other perfs are thoughtful, credible and deliberately unspectacular, although Pepper supplies special power as the leader the young men need as they come face to face with the enemy.
I didn't realize that the movie follows them after the war. It appears to have tried to stay as close to the book as possible (the book was written by one of the participant's sons).
What I think will be interesting about this, is the firestorm that's going to crop up. These days, knowledge of history is not ad abundant as it once was, and many people do not realize that there was a second flag raising, and some are going to be uncomfortable that the government sent the survivors on a publicity tour of the US.
Of course, most of us know all of this stuff (and if you watch the old newsreels that ran before movies in the '40s, you'd see all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that were went on such tours), but still, there will be people that get upset.
I'm more curious to see the Japanese version of this that they are releasing next year. I've visited several of the islands that saw the heaviest fighting, and it was amazing how tenacious they were. I'm guessing that since they are going to show both sides, that this might play well in Japan.
From what I've seen, a lot of Japanese are insanely curious about the war, but are discouraged in Japan from looking into it.
I remember a group of Japanese tourists came through the US National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas (yes, it's in the middle of Texas!) a few years ago, and some even participated in the recreations (they have a "living history" group at the museum who recreate island assualts, complete with flamethrower).