Flags of Our Fathers

2006 war movie

Rating: 14/20 (Dylan: 12/20)

Plot: So what we're left with is our memories. Swirling stars above a city of stone, silver buses and snapping fingers. I fondled a girl and rapped for nickels outside a smorgasbord while you watched a dying man desperately attempting to win you a stuffed seal from a claw machine. Just how baggy did I wear my pants back then? And did I ever tell you that I never actually wrote that rap song, the one about Dave Winfield, the one you told me was clever but were likely far too smart to actually think that? It doesn't matter. The stuffed seal didn't care, so why should anybody else? All those dead people, that black wall, and the teasing of a rainbow umbrella lifted toward a glum sky. What was I doing, and why was I doing it? That's what I'd like to know.

Dylan didn't like the structure of this one (he did say that he liked the movie), but the bouncing between the war scenes on Iwo Jima and the travels of the three surviving flag raisers worked well. The movie is too long and at times seems redundant, and the last twenty minutes or so is bogged down by some narration which almost makes it seem like an entirely different movie. I like the messages at the heart of this movie, and Eastwood does a good enough job of portraying the harshness of war as well as the harshness of post-war realistically. But I was bored far too often with the safe direction and the Hollywoodiness of it all. We'll watch Letters from Iwo Jima soon enough, I suppose.