Movie Review: FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)–**1/2
I imagine it’s a hard time to sell a war film about heroism and duty. I imagine it’s even harder to sell a war film that isn’t as great as it could have been.
Flags of Our Fathers is a touching movie, but I’m disinclined to call director Clint Eastwood’s last two directorial efforts “touching.” Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby were dramatic jackhammers. That makes it much harder to watch Eastwood flounder with a film like Flags of Our Fathers.
Six men raised a flag on Iwo Jima. A picture was taken. Three of them survived to tell the tale after that battle was over. In the middle of a world war, heroism is in the eyes of the public relations people.
With the nation on the verge of bankruptcy, the American government calls on the three heroes of Iwo Jima who are still alive to sell war bonds. Doc (Ryan Phillippe), Rene (Jesse Bradford) and Ira (Adam Beach) dutifully fill their roles as bond salesmen, but the war still haunts the soldiers. Ira, particularly, has trouble, indulging in booze to make the ghosts go away. Still, the public regards these men as heroes and they are forced to fill that role, whether they consider the idea to be true or not.
Flags of Our Fathers is based on a book by Doc’s real life son James Bradley. The main problem with Flags is, in an attempt to incorporate Bradley’s book researching, the film gets bogged down. Bradley’s perspective is compelling, but it’s nothing good voice over narration couldn’t solve.
I didn’t want to see Doc’s son on screen. I didn’t want to see him researching the film and talking to (I assume) real WWII vets. It disrupted the narrative flow, especially considering the dramatic potential for some of the moments.
Adam Beach is the man in most of the film’s truly remarkable scenes. Beach, who has evolved from a great actor to an astonishing one in a single role, gives much needed weight to a film that’s as bland as unsalted crackers.
Take, for example, the unexciting casting. The pretty Ryan Phillippe and the wasy Jesse Bradford are not just uninteresting, but rendered ineffective when they stand next to Beach. In a film that claims such talent as Barry Pepper and Jamie Bell, I wonder why Phillippe and Bradford’s characters weren’t played by the more talented actors. Phillippe and Bradford weren’t cast for their star power, that’s for sure.
Of course, the two actors never really have a chance to make a go of it after an overlong Battle of Iwo Jima.
Eastwood’s war film looks too much like every WWII film since Saving Private Ryan. Sitting through another long grueling battle scene that doesn’t stand up to even Band of Brothers makes an audience weary. It also takes away the impact of the flashbacks that happen later in the film.
The flashbacks are compelling, much the way they are in the TV series Lost. Flags of Our Fathers never settles for telling just the story of the three heroes of Iwo Jima with brief flashbacks to the island fight. The moment you watch actor John Slattery as Bud Gerber tell the soldiers that they’ll stick with the mythology of the flag raising over the truth, you know the battle scene was wrong and that the James Bradley character shouldn’t be in the film. There is an interesting examination of heroism in this film, but what could have also been a jackhammer drama is just Eastwood’s big boring epic.
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