Letters from Iwo Jima
2006
***
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryō Kase, Shidō Nakamura; Hiroshi Watanabe, Takumi Bando
Clint Eastwood's companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers shows the battle of Iwo Jima from the enemy's point of view. This one is a more traditional war movie, and a noble attempt to portray the Japanese soldiers as something more than robotic killing machines. In 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army, lead by General Kuribayashi, prepares for the impending American invasion with little support from mainland Japan. The commander's decision to dig defenses into the mountain only postpones the inevitable, and once the defeat is imminent, the ancient honour code compels the men to die by their own hand rather than surrender shamefully. Iris Yamashita's screenplay convincingly and movingly tells the personal stories of a handful of ordinary men who have ordinary hopes and dreams. However, when the film focuses on these few men, it loses touch with the battle and cannot convey that almost 22,000 Japanese and 7,000 American troops died on the island. Towards the end, it's difficult to figure out where the survivors are, where they try to go, and what exactly is happening outside the caves? Based on the book Picture Letters from Commander in Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi.
