Review: Letters from Iwo Jima

Flags of Our Fathers was good, but it wasn’t great. So when Clint Eastwood’s film Letters from Iwo Jima — the follow-up to Flags — started getting Oscar accolades, I was a bit wary. After all, Iwo Jima was being billed as Flags from the Japanese perspective, and as promising as that may have sounded, the mediocrity of the first film kept lingering in my head. So I’m quite happy to report that not only did Letters from Iwo Jima live up to the hype, but it is easily Eastwood’s best film of his directing career. And that’s definitely saying a lot.

The story is based on a series of letters from Japanese soldiers stationed at Iwo Jima right before the American invasion, and unlike Flags, it is not a story about bravado and showmanship. Instead, Letters from Iwo Jima is more about the relationships between soldiers and their past lives. Ken Watanabe does a fantastic job as the commanding officer, but it is the unknown (at least to most North American audiences) Japanese actors that shine as soldiers resigned to the fact that they will die protecting a barren island with no real resources. And while Eastwood’s knack for over-telling a story might seep in from time to time, these actors keep the audience grounded enough that they leave the theater sufficiently touched.

Letters from Iwo Jima may not be better than Pan’s Labyrinth or The Departed, but it is clearly a triumph in Eastwood’s career and is one of the best films of 2006.