Flags of Our Fathers
This entry was posted on 10/22/2006 9:45 PM and is filed under Movies.
I saw a sneak preview of Flags of Our Fathers last Wednesday night. My mom had some tickets and Dad couldn't go with her, so Woody and I did.
The movie was very good. It's the first movie Clint Eastwood has made that I actually wanted to see. His movies are all such downers. As a rule, I don't seek out depressing "entertainment" even if it's really well done.
This one wasn't exactly what I expected, and that's okay. Parts of it were very sad. It's about what happened to the three surviving marines (one was actually navy, but I'm pretending they were all marines, kay?) who are in the famous photo of the flag going up on Iwo Jima.
I thought the story would be more about the 40 days of fighting but it wasn't and looking back I'm glad. The scenes showing the battles were really tense and grisly. We probably got enough of that in the flashbacks of the story as it followed the 3 who lived on their War Bond Rally tour. My only complaint is that the movie was cut in such a way that I didn't get to know who was who of the great men and soldiers who died during that awful siege. Maybe that's for the best, too. After all, these were real men who died, not fictional composites like the characters in Saving Private Ryan. It's a fine line, trying to make a movie about real events and real people, finding the balace between honoring them and exploiting them.
It's a very good movie. A-.
