Review of Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) by Samuel J — 01 Jan 2010

"For our homeland. Until the very last man. Our duty is to stop the enemy right here. Do not expect to return home alive.".

Director: Clint Eastwood.

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase.

Running time: 141 minutes.

Country: USA.

Letters From Iwo Jima an absolutely fantastic war film that is a fantastic example of epic filmmaking. The cinematography of the film is absolutely incredible! It is mostly green but the costumes and visual moments of the film are really dark all the way through. It was absolutely brilliantly filmed! This film is better than Flags Of Our Fathers in every single way. Flags Of Our Fathers was like a piss-take of Saving Private Ryan whereas Letters From Iwo Jima is a new standard of filmmaking in war films. It also brings back the old war films again and how they were filmed and the characters within them.

Clint Eastwood has for the past four films that he has done have had two films in the same year. In 2006: Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima and in 2008: Changeling and Gran Torino. I could see this was great producing from Spielberg. I would have thought this would have a good Spielberg film but I'm still glad that it was Eastwood though. Letters From Iwo Jima is a fantastic film but I don't think it quite deserved a Best Picture nomination. Should have gone to Notes On A Scandal or Blood Diamond instead.

Letters From Iwo Jima is Clint Eastwood's fourth best film after masterpieces Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and Changeling. Letters From Iwo Jima is definitely the best action war film of the decade thus far.