Review of Flags of Our Fathers (2006) by Joshua L — 05 Feb 2012

I must say straight on the beginning. The movie lost one star because of couple of things described later, not because it would be overal bad or it would be hard to watch...

I happened to saw Lettters from Iwo Jima ("IWO") first, than "Flags from our fathers ("FLAGS"). I would probably skip the Iwo if watching Flags first. But fortunately I saw Iwo first. And I thing this is the right order to watch, if one like to concentrate to the battle itself. Flags adds to the Iwo but not the opposite so much. Flags is hard to understand without seeing Iwo first, but not opposite. If one is more interested on US political affairs and corruption, about raising money for making more war, forgeting (abusing) sole people for "higher" political goals, than second movie, Iwo Jima, is probably not interesting at all to watch. So in 2012 for thoose not watching them, it's their decision how to sort out the order of watching.

1) Beginning has not as much draw as Letters from Iwo Jima. It's looks just like hundreds of US war movies praising glory of US army. Are all thoose talking and shallow Marine jokes there for gaining publicity to attract new rookies in the Army?

2) It's hard to remember any of the characters through the movie without repeting scenes for several times and jumping from the beginnig to the end, because the events from the past, future and present time are scatterd all over the timeline of the movie and story jumps heavily in all directions.

3) In Flags one would expect to see the opposite point of view of the same battle as in Iwo, but portion of scenes which are about the battle is rather small compared to all others, which is not that much interesting. At the end of movie all the storylines do come together and movie makes sense, but that could be more evident through the movie.

It's great movie in any other aspects, reliable with facts, extremely faithful to known original footage, pictures and reports. It is just too much details about US politics, intrugues, etc. It looks like the book-writing of Bradley's son have main role in this movie, not he battle, not the main characters. It's hard to idetify even thoose old men when interwieved by Bradley's son. Could be way better, than it is. Maybe battle scenes were too expensive to make and they cut them out a heavily.