Review of Flags of Our Fathers (2006) by Parker M — 24 Dec 2009

When typing this review, it was a difficult decision for me to decide which of these 2 films were better. I wanted to give them both 4 stars, but that would be no fun for the reader; I needed to make a decision: who won? By a sliver, I would give it to Flags of our Fathers, for this reason: its message is more meaningful to how we nowadays perceive war. Flags? basic message is to teach how war is not a video game, and that the only ?heroes? we come up with are the soldiers who lay dead on the battlefield. That is the ideal theme of the movie. It sounds basic, and it is, but Clint Eastwood, one of my favourite directors next to Scorsese (The Departed) presents this masterpiece in such a sentimental way, it is shivering. It?s unfortunate I am not doing my best movies of the year this month because Flags and Iwo Jima would be imprinted on there in a heartbeat. After seeing Iwo Jima, I could not imagine Flags impeaching the brilliance of this movie, especially since it came out with such luke-warm reviews. However, the whole film mixes so well together and it even intersects with Iwo Jima. For example, when the American soldier annihilates a Japanese pillbox by torching it with a flame thrower and a scene where the Americans find the Japanese after they performed something I call the ?Kamikaze deed?. This is shown both equally well in both films.

The brief plot of the story is about how the famous 3 (really 6 who put up the flag, but 3 of them died a few days later at Iwo Jima) go about there lives after the war and become quite famous for putting up a flag on Mount Suribachi, when really they weren?t the true ?heroes? of the battle, but they were just putting up a replacement flag for the original one. Eastwood comes about how it all happened so fluidly and his ability to convince the watcher how war is not a ?fun and games? experience when you get to run around blasting your rifle. Some how, he presents his theme slightly more persuasively in Flags than Iwo Jima.

On the other hand, just to set things straight, I was not happy to see Paul Walker as one of the marines fighting, but he actually does a decent job, however, it doesn?t redeem his work in such overkill films like 2 Fast 2 Furious and Running Scared, and I guess Flags is not quite as original as Iwo Jima because it is about the Americans fighting in World War 2; hmmm? where have we seen that? Maybe, Big Red One, Saving Private Ryan, and Bridge on the River Kwai. Those films were all great, but somehow Flags (for me) topped it because it is so realistic when it comes to its points of war and its action sequences. Eastwood is at the top of his game, but reluctantly, I don?t want him to earn the Best Picture Oscar for Iwo Jima for this reason: The Departed.