Review of Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) by Timeformime — 17 Feb 2011

This movie is lovely. It's not conventionally nice and fun to watch as escapist entertainment (duhhhrrr - it's a war movie, guys), but its message is original and not at all biased to either side. It simply seeks to tell the war from another perspective. The emotional punch that Eastwood brings to all of his films is most carefully channeled here, as the characters are well-drawn and their various fates are believable.

I guess Eastwood's and the screenwriter's best idea was to make the Japanese human. Not angels, not demons, just people. The Japanese and the Americans both still have skewed ideas about this war, and the movie avoids this cloud of romanticism and brings a breath of fresh air to those who like thoughtful movies, and prefer reality overt romanticism about war. There are very few movies like it. No I don't think it's exactly how it happened, but it takes the war movie genre and injects some well-needed humanity into the side that is most often demonized.