PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/20/06)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Letters From Iwo Jima is receiving more attention than Clint Eastwood's other 2006 World War II movie, Flags of Our Fathers. Eastwood's biggest successes in recent years have been tied to the films that have been meditations on death, whether it was the act of avenging a loved one's murder in Mystic River or the contemplation of euthanasia in Million Dollar Baby. Flags of Our Fathers was a film about those who survived the war rather than those that died. Letters of Iwo Jima, on the other hand, feels like the film Eastwood really wanted to make, the one about the men who knew they would be sacrificing their lives for what they hoped was a greater good.

Of course, that story could only really be told from a perspective of one of America's enemies in World War II, and it's why Letters From Iwo Jima recounts Japan's defense of Mount Suribachi from the Japanese point of view. Theirs is a suicide mission where the goal isn't to fight offensively, but rather to buy their countrymen more time. These troops are under the command of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (played stoically by The Last Samurai's Ken Watanabe), who is more of a tactician than a soldier, and one of the few Japanese combatants to live in the U.S. before joining the war. Through flashbacks, Eastwood touches upon Kuribayashi's time in America, illuminating his efforts to protect his men.

But Letters is cloaked in darkness from the black sand of Iwo Jima to the long shadows that follow each of the Japanese soldiers at every turn. The desaturated photography that was also employed on Eastwood's Flags is a shade darker here. Though the color scheme may be murkier, Eastwood's implicit knowledge of storytelling through film remains vibrant. There is hardly anything sentimental about Letters, yet its linear approach proves to be quite moving. The men that we're used to seeing on the trigger end of a gun are taken from their own point of view. There are no villains here except war itself, a point that Eastwood makes resoundingly clear with his subtle touch.

Letters from Iwo Jima isn't just the film that Eastwood wanted to make, but one that the film's producer Steven Spielberg had tried to make twice with Empire of the Sun and Saving Private Ryan. While the latter film had the brutality of Eastwood's film and the former had its compassion, Letters From Iwo Jima reminds us how redemption can be found in interesting places, whether it's for the filmmakers in real life or on screen for those we used to fight against.

— Stephen Saito