Movie Review: Letters from Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima (2007, R): *** ½

There are a few very sad moments in Letters from Iwo Jima that make it  sometimes heartbreaking to look at; then though, we realize that this is war, and wars are ugly affairs.  Letters from Iwo Jima gave me a totally different look at the topics of war and battle not because it focuses upon the Japanese side of the story over the American side at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, but because it shows that in war, no one is really the good guys and no one else is really the bad guys.  In other words, there are no protagonists and no antagonists, no forces of good vs. evil.  Letters from Iwo Jima devotes four instances during the course of its running time to depicting the good side and the evil side to both the Americans and the Japanese: in one scene a group of Japanese soldiers bayonet an American prisoner to death, in another, they shoot an American, take him prisoner, but then care for him and tend to his wounds. Later, an American soldier mercilessly shoots two helpless Japanese prisoners with his M1 Garand rifle, in one of the last scenes several Americans spare a Japanese survivor trying to kill all of them by yelling and swinging a shovel.  It may sound very formulaic by the way that I have explained it, but when watching the movie on the screen, I was able to fully realize that there are instances of both good and evil on both sides in any war.  There are a few scenes that drag, and a few of the battle sequences are cut short right when they begin to get interesting.  But Letters from Iwo Jima is an above and beyond adequate companion piece to Flags of our Fathers and, even better, serves as a valuable, visual history lesson for the real Battle of Iwo Jima like in new way than ever before.  And so far, it’s the best film adaptation of any battle or event in the Pacific Theater of War in World War II that I have seen. Directed by Clint Eastwood.