Good review. Thanks for your insights and opinions.
I am looking forward to seeing this movie.
BUMP for great freeping.
I look forward to seeing this movie. I've already read the book.
Sounds like another disappointing effort to deconstruct the patriotism of WWII.
Yet for some, they grasp the label with both hands - and they keep the hat.
Joel Seagal is a long time local film/movie critic here in NY city for local news....typical liberal/gay from what I can tell...
He gave a review and I readied myself....his review was so emotional I could not contain myself....
After saying the movie was absolutely glorious and that while you watch it you don't think you are watching history rather you are a part of history he went on to thank Clint Eastwood for making this movie and reminding us of the heroism at Iwo...
He ended with something I will never forget- "the reason we are here today is because they went there"...
I thought the two news women next to him were about to bust out in tears...
Fantastic interview I did not expect!!!!
I just got back from seeing it and concur with this review.
One thing that really impressed me was the batch of other contemporaneous photos that ran along with the credits at the end. Some moving images - and most of the audience stayed to see them. The final part - after the credits had rolled - was of the dozens of dog tags strung from the memorial that is now in place at the hilltop.
Also, a lot of the film was shot on location on Iwo Jima, which added to the realism.
The main plot line is that the nation was broke, and would have to sue for peace with the Japanese
Huh?
That is a Hollywood deconstruct. Piss on Eastwood, I've changed my mind about going to this movie.
There were two old men sitting beside me who were wearing these jackets. During the scene where the squad is getting ready to go for a swim, one of them looked over at his friend and commented that they didn't have white boxers, they had green. I don't know if this meant that he was there on Iwo Jima, but he was likely somewhere in the Pacific during the war.
To quantify things, if Private Ryan is a 100%, then Flags is...about a 65%.
The movie does jump around, and somehow on the emotional side touches on the maudlin in a way that Ryan totally avoided.
I was expecting a Ryan of the Pacific Theatre, and...mostly I didn't get it.
I figured that because Clint Eastwood was directing it, it would just be mind-blowingly good, but it was just.....good and not more.
Also, I thought somehow the fierce fighting of the Japanese in the Pacific Islands was factored somehow into Truman's decision to drop the A-bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Is that perspective true (I may be mistaken-- it's not a decision I have spent any serious time pondering or researching, but just accepting as a part of history) and if so, is it present or missing in the book/movie?
Read the book. Saw the movie. I liked the book. I didn't like the movie.
My wife and I saw it today. We also took my Dad who was a pharmacists mate (Navy Corpsman) who invaded Iwo Jima on D-Day and Okinawa (also) on D-Day.
First, I liked the movie. I thought the depictions of the mayhem of the invasion were quite realistic. My Dad said they were, as well. He said he also remembers how hard it was to hear anything in the din, although he never thought about that in all the years since then until we saw the movie.
Second, I was apprehensive about seeing it because I thought the war bond drive portion could degenerate into a soap opera which is a shame since the story of the invasion is such a great story on its own. After seeing it I thought they could have spent more time on Iwo and less on the bond drive.
I understand you can't do 2.5 hours in just the din of battle. That would have lost most the viewers. Still, the bond drive I thought could have been more of an interlude to give the viewers a rest from time to time. Clint did a good job of showing what filthy slime were politicians in those days as they are today. The flash backs within flash backs didn't harm the movie for me. The way it was written, that made sense.
I'm sure I'll think of more things as time goes by, but here are some impressions:
Quintessential Eastwood (in these sensitive times): The Sailors and Marines did seem to enjoy a good smoke.
The audience was mostly older folks. I was among the youngest there. I'm going to be 55 next month. My guess is the vast majority of the population never heard of Iwo Jima, as it doesn't make the radar screen among the young folk.
Unusual item: When the movie ended, the exit theme was marvelously understated. During the theme and credits, there were many pictures of the real battle flashed on the screen. While they were flashing these pictures, no one in the theater moved. We all just sat there and looked at those pictures. I think it lasted several minutes, maybe five or so.
I knew the story of Ira Hayes long ago. I remember an ancient Johnny Cash song that told the tragic story. I didn't need to see it today, so anyone can have my part of it...again...too much focus on the bond drive.
Other than my Dad, I've met two other men in my life that participated in that invasion. With but one or two questions, I have never...NEVER...had the least bit of difficulty getting these guys to tell their story.
I also once sought out and spoke to a sailor on the Yorktown in the Battle of Midway. This guy just loved telling me his story.
I have worked with and personally known guys in battle in Vietnam. I have never...NEVER...had the least difficulty in getting these guys to tell their stories. (I grew up with one guy that went to Vietnam and returned a head case ala Ira Hayes. He was the only one I ever met that did so.)
I think the axiom of ex-military never wanting to talk about war experiences is a bunch of drivel. Just an opinion.
I do rememeber asking my dad when I was a teen how guys can keep pushing forward when guys around them are getting blown to bits. He told me long before I ever heard anyone else say it that in that kind of struggle guys fight for the guys around them, no more, no less.
Disclaimer: I was Navy and never involved in any battles so all of my battle genre experiences have been vicarious.
That theme is raised in the adverts and I thought 'Huh? We were going to pack it in in winter 1945 when we were on the verge of victory in both Europe and the Pacific?' Granted after Iwo there was still Okinawa and still a lot of fighting and dying in Europe too in March and April, but......
I just watched the trailer for The Nativity online. I've got to see that one. I loved "This Christmas" as the trailer opens. If the actual movie is half as good as the trailer, this one is going to be special. They don't make movies like that anymore. Thanks for the heads up.
I just saw the movie and I was looking online for reviews and came across this....
BTW, it was OK... but then again, I didn't like Saving Private Ryan...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1927787,00.html
Absent from history: the black soldiers at Iwo Jima
Nearly 900 African-Americans fought on the Japanese island but not one appears in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-tipped film, writes Dan Glaister
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday October 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The portrayal in Clint Eastwood's film, Flags of Our Fathers, of the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima.
On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.
"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer, over and over and over."
Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island. While the battle scene's in the film - which opens today in the US - show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.
The film tells the story of the raising of the stars and stripes over Mount Suribachi at the tip of the island. The moment was captured in a photograph that became a symbol of the US war effort. Eastwood's film follows the marines in the picture, including the Native American Ira Hayes, as they were removed from combat operations to promote the sale of government war bonds.
Mr McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US navy, even had a part in the raising of the flag. "The man who put the first flag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of pipe from me to put the flag up on," he says. That, too, is absent from the film.
"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a black face," said Mr McPhatter. "This is the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We still have a strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."
Melton McLaurin, author of the forthcoming The Marines of Montford Point and an accompanying documentary to be released in February, says that there were hundreds of black soldiers on Iwo Jima from the first day of the 35-day battle. Although most of the black marine units were assigned ammunition and supply roles, the chaos of the landing soon undermined the battle plan.
"When they first hit the beach the resistance was so fierce that they weren't shifting ammunition, they were firing their rifles," said Dr McLaurin.
The failure to transfer the active role played by African-Americans at Iwo Jima to the big screen does not surprise him. "One of the marines I interviewed said that the people who were filming newsreel footage on Iwo Jima deliberately turned their cameras away when black folks came by. Blacks are not surprised at all when they see movies set where black troops were engaged and never show on the screen. I would like to say that it was from ignorance but anybody can do research and come up with books about African-Americans in world war two. I think it has to do with box office and what producers of movies think Americans really want to see."
He added: "I want to see these guys get their due. They're just so anxious to have their story told and to have it known."
Roland Durden, another black marine, landed on the beach on the third day. "When we hit the shore we were loaded with ammunition and the Japanese hit us with mortar." Private Durden was soon assigned to burial detail, "burying the dead day in, day out. It seemed like endless days. They treated us like workmen rather than marines."
Mr Durden, too, is wearied but unsurprised at the omissions in Eastwood's film. "We're always left out of the films, from John Wayne on," he said. Mr Durden ascribes to both the conspiracy as well as the cock-up theory of history. "They didn't want blacks to be heroes. This was pre-1945, pre civil rights."
A spokesperson for Warner Bros said: "The film is correct based on the book." The omission was first remarked upon in a review by Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, who noted that the history of black involvement at Iwo Jima was recorded in several books, including Christopher Moore's recent Fighting for America: Black Soldiers - the Unsung Heroes of World War II. "They weren't in the background at all," said Moore.
"The people carrying the ammunition were 90% black, so that's an opportunity to show black soldiers. These are our films and very often they become our history, historical documents." Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back.
"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy," she said. "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie."
The first chapter to James Bradley's book Flags of Our Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with a quotation from president Harry Truman. "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." It would provide a fitting endnote to Eastwood's film.
Eastwood really has only two points he spends the movie dwelling on:
1. War is a brutal hell.
2. White people in the 40's were racists.
Some of the old war movie cliches are just too good for him to pass up too, for example, the senior officers are preening, incompetent boobs.
The ridiculous line that the country was going bankrupt or so weary of war that it was on the verge of offering the Japanese peace terms was laughable.
They didn't, that occurs after training and first combat.
I have known three Marines, who fought across the Pacific, one was already serving, one was a pilot, who told me he joined because he was the best pilot around and we needed the best, the third enlisted to kill Japs.
Now what is this about going bankrupt, we pouring more men, ships and airplane into the theater everyday. My father was leading ferry squadrons of planes from India to Australia and was expecting to rotate to B-29s anyday.