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Movie Review - Letters from Iwo Jima (2007)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
Clint Eastwood |
| Starring: |
Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase and Shido Nakamura |
| Rated: |
R (for graphic war violence) |
| Length: |
141 minutes |
| Genre: |
Historical Drama/War |
| Tagline: |
None. |
| Studio: |
Warner Brothers |
| Website: |
Letters from
Iwo Jima |
| Release: |
January 19, 2007 (Memphis) |
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PLOT
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Sixty-one years ago, US and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, several hundred letters are unearthed
from the island's caves. The letters allow Clint Eastwood the opportunity to (go after the best Foreign Film Oscar)
tell the story of the battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese. A better counterpart to
Flags of Our Fathers ensues.
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JOHNNY'S TAKE
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More of a character study than a war movie, Letters from Iwo Jima succeeds where
Flags of Our Fathers fails - it maintains focus, presents a somewhat
engaging story, and boasts solid acting. Granted, the whole movie is in Japanese, and foreign languages have a
way of masking acting deficiencies, but at least I didn't have to sit through a trilogy of Adam Beach crying
scenes.
The movie doesn't exactly movie at a '69 Camaro's pace (I fell asleep early in the movie - reading the subtitles
wore me out, I guess), but once the bombs started dropping, my interest awakened.
I found it interesting to see the battle from the perspective of the Japanese's defense of the island. Of
particular intrigue is watching the Japanese soldiers slowly fall into disarray. As their hopelessness grew,
their desire to fight for their country lessened.
I know what you're thinking because it was one of my main concerns - is this a pro-Japanese movie? They were the
enemies, so we don't want them glorified, right? Well, don't worry. The film doesn't sympathize with the Japanese
cause, it sympathizes with the Japanese foot soldier who didn't know what he was fighting for other than his
country, the soldier who was told Americans were savages and he believed it because he'd never met one.
There is one scene I wasn't fond of - a scene involving an American soldier killing two Japanese POWs. There are
two viewpoints you can take on this. Much like the film's color scheme, Eastwood paints the war picture in
shades of gray. He puts everything up there in all its ugliness for the viewer to judge.
I'm sure that kind of stuff happened, but it can also be argued that by showing a scene of that nature makes it
look like Eastwood didn't do enough to draw any distinction between the two sides. Shades of gray are fine, but
there are blacks and whites. Why not show them as well? I noticed a couple of older guys who looked to be
WWII vets walked out of the theater at this point, and I overheard one saying, "I can't watch this."
I perfectly understand. That's why I'd be hard-pressed to recommend this to my grandfather or any other WWII vet.
To them all Japanese (just like all Germans) were the enemy, and many of them still have no interest in
viewing the war from their perspective. They fought the war, not me, so I respect that opinion. They were
there, I wasn't, so they know more about what their enemy was like than Clint Eastwood or a bunch of letters
could ever tell us.
But if you're a history buff and you're interested in seeing what the battle of Iwo Jima may have looked like
from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers left there to hopelessly defend the island then you'll find
Letters from Iwo Jima to be a competently-made, drearily-shot twist on the war genre.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Almost 7,000 American soldiers were killed on Iwo Jima; more than 20,000 Japanese troops perished.
- Eastwood's intention with both films (this and Flags of Our Fathers)
was to create a complete picture of each side of the conflict by focusing on a handful of individuals and revealing
the battle through the prism of their individual experiences. "In most war pictures I grew up with, there were good
guys and bad guys," he comments. "Life is not like that and war is not like that. These movies are not about winning
or losing. They are about this war's effects on human beings and those who lose their lives much before their
time."
- General Kuribayashi opposed the war with America - a country for which he had a great affinity - but nonetheless
fought it passionately and with conviction.
- Faced by an overwhelming invasion force, the Japanese resistance at Iwo Jima was predicted to last no more than
five days. However, Kuribayashi's revolutionary tactics transform the invasion into an historical battle spanning
over a month.
- Like General Kuribayashi, Baron Nishi considered the Americans his friends. In fact, in their research the
filmmakers uncovered a tale of an American filmmaker, Sy Bartlett, who knew Baron Nishi from his time in Los
Angeles. "Bartlett landed on Iwo Jima after it had been taken over by the United States and learned that his friend
Baron Nishi was on the island," Lorenz explains. "So, he did a broadcast over the public address system asking for
him to come out and surrender."
- Ken Watanabe was in Batman Begins with Christian Bale who is in the
upcoming 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe who is in the upcoming American Gangster with Josh Brolin
who was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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This earns its R rating through some pretty extreme scenes of violence. There's no way you'll want your children
to see this. At least I certainly hope you don't think it's appropriate for your pre-teen to watch Japanese soldiers
blowing themselves up with grenades.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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No real surprises.
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THE GIST
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Letters from Iwo Jima is more of a "historical drama" than it is a "war movie." A lot of movies have been
made about WWII, and this one attempts a different perspective. It's not for the casual viewer.
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