Flags of Our Fathers

Flags of Our Fathers was a big disappointment. Coming off of Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, I was starting to get the impression that Clint Eastwood could no wrong in his golden years. Well, even the great ones have duds. This film is unfocused, confusing, and unrelentingly reverent. Yes, our servicemen were brave in World War II. Do we really need a two-hour plus film to tell us that?

The core of the problem is in the script. It feels like someone handed the writers the best-seller and said, "make a movie of this," despite the inherent storytelling problems. The story is, of course, about the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima and had their picture snapped. The picture was one of the most famous taken in the twentieth-century, and gave them a brief and surreal period of fame, which quickly faded. Sounds like a good story, but this film doesn't tell it. Instead, we get shifting points of view and jumps in time. For example, the film begins with narration by actor Harve Presnell, who then appears from time to time, telling the story to the son of one of the flag-raisers (and the man who would write the book). At no time are we told who Presnell is. I had to look it up on IMDB, and found that he played an officer who had about two minutes of screen time during the Iwo Jima sequences. Also, it's difficult to tell the soldiers apart. Which one was Harlan Block, who was mistakenly not identified as one of the men in the picture? We don't know until he is killed, because a buddy yells, "Harlan!" after he is gunned down. This is very amateurish writing.

The battle sequences are well done, but this sort of thing now always makes me think of Saving Private Ryan, so it doesn't tread new ground. None of the performances stand out, except for Adam Beach as Ira Hayes, who was a Pima Indian. Hayes led a sad life following the picture, and ended up dying of exposure probably brought on by alcohol.

I would be surprised if this film gets a Best Picture nomination at this point.