I heard quite a number of good things about Flags of our Fathers when it was released last year, but I missed a theater screening of it. I ended up watching Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima first. Maybe this was the wrong thing to do because after viewing the films out of order, my opinion is that Letters from Iwo Jima was far more moving than Flags. I thought that the storyline from Letters was much more cohesive.

Unlike Letters which focused primarily on the actual war on Iwo Jima, Flags examined several different aspects of the conflict. The film would jump back and forth from the United States mainland and all its propaganda surrounding the war, then back to the island itself. This caused quite a bit of confusion for me. I could never get a good grip of the flow of the story because of the constant “flashbacks” and sudden transitions. The characters never quite made that connection to the viewer, and the acting was good but nothing memorable.

What makes this film a worthwhile rental is its realism and message behind the movie. Otherwise the screenplay was poorly written and you could probably skip this film and still enjoy watching its superior “partner” film, Letters from Iwo Jima.

In February, 1945, one of the fiercest battles of the Pacific theater of World War II occurs on the tiny island of Iwo Jima. Thousands of Marines attack the stronghold maintained by thousands of Japanese, and the slaughter on both sides is horrific. Early in the battle, an American flag is raised atop the high point, Mount Suribachi, and a photograph of the raising becomes an American cause celebre. As a powerful inspiration to war-sick Americans, the photo becomes a symbol of the Allied cause. The three surviving flag raisers, Rene Gagnon, John Bradley, and Ira Hayes, are whisked back to civilization to help raise funds for the war effort. But the accolades for heroism heaped upon the three men are at odds with their own personal realizations that thousands of real heroes lie dead on Iwo Jima, and that their own contributions to the fight are only symbolic and not deserving of the singling out they are experiencing. Each of the three must come to terms with the honors, exploitation, and grief that they face simply for being in a photograph.

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