Stream it now Flags of Our Fathers 2006

 

many people have commented on this film trying to be saving private ryan. well it doesnt. on the other hand, you cant help but compare the two, and this is in the shadow of spielbergs masterpiece unfortunatly.

It was a good movie, but I felt it tried too hard to be "Saving Private Ryan" at parts. I also felt there were too many characters. Someone dies in the beginning and everybody in the movie is sad, but you just feel indifferent. I did like the acting though. Another thing I didn't like was, half-way through the movie, we go back to this guy interviewing a veteran. They haven't been doing it all throughout the movie, so why start now? And it doesn't happen again for another half an hour. Pretty unnecessary, if you ask me. You would probably be able to tell it was Eastwood if it didn't tell you. There something about Clint's movies that make them feel, I dunno, Clint Eastwoodish.

pretty descent

A great movie with great acting, but most viewers, like myself, expected this movie to be more about the battle.

It was watchable but lacking the magic that Eastwood movies have had of late. Well executed war scenes and very strong interesting topic matter. I think the actors might have been the problem, if there even was one.

Not as good as the book, but still a great movie.

The weaker of Eastwood's Iwo Jima two-parter. At best an above average war film.

Moves as slow as molasses. Poor acting by an all-star cast and lazy direction by Eastwood.

When typing this review, it was a difficult decision for me to decide which of these 2 films were better. I wanted to give them both 4 stars, but that would be no fun for the reader; I needed to make a decision: who won? By a sliver, I would give it to Flags of our Fathers, for this reason: its message is more meaningful to how we nowadays perceive war. Flags' basic message is to teach how war is not a video game, and that the only "heroes" we come up with are the soldiers who lay dead on the battlefield. That is the ideal theme of the movie. It sounds basic, and it is, but Clint Eastwood, one of my favourite directors next to Scorsese (The Departed) presents this masterpiece in such a sentimental way, it is shivering. It's unfortunate I am not doing my best movies of the year this month because Flags and Iwo Jima would be imprinted on there in a heartbeat. After seeing Iwo Jima, I could not imagine Flags impeaching the brilliance of this movie, especially since it came out with such luke-warm reviews. However, the whole film mixes so well together and it even intersects with Iwo Jima. For example, when the American soldier annihilates a Japanese pillbox by torching it with a flame thrower and a scene where the Americans find the Japanese after they performed something I call the "Kamikaze deed". This is shown both equally well in both films.

The brief plot of the story is about how the famous 3 (really 6 who put up the flag, but 3 of them died a few days later at Iwo Jima) go about there lives after the war and become quite famous for putting up a flag on Mount Suribachi, when really they weren't the true "heroes" of the battle, but they were just putting up a replacement flag for the original one. Eastwood comes about how it all happened so fluidly and his ability to convince the watcher how war is not a "fun and games" experience when you get to run around blasting your rifle. Some how, he presents his theme slightly more persuasively in Flags than Iwo Jima.

On the other hand, just to set things straight, I was not happy to see Paul Walker as one of the marines fighting, but he actually does a decent job, however, it doesn't redeem his work in such overkill films like 2 Fast 2 Furious and Running Scared, and I guess Flags is not quite as original as Iwo Jima because it is about the Americans fighting in World War 2; hmmm... where have we seen that? Maybe, Big Red One, Saving Private Ryan, and Bridge on the River Kwai. Those films were all great, but somehow Flags (for me) topped it because it is so realistic when it comes to its points of war and its action sequences. Eastwood is at the top of his game, but reluctantly, I don't want him to earn the Best Picture Oscar for Iwo Jima for this reason: The Departed.

Technically brilliant, but lacks the emotional punch expected from an Eastwood film. There were too many characters and too little time for development, it was hard to sympathize with most of them. Otherwise it was a very engaging look at fame and heroism, and the contradicting feelings a "hero" (Adam Beach- the best in the movie) would go through, seeing what's happened to his friends, and questioning his own sense of achievement.
Very good film, the battle scenes are nothing less than BRILLIANT, but it left me emotionally distant from most of its characters.