Clint Eastwood is on a hell of a run as a director. Who would have thought his talent behind the camera would exceed that in front of it. I wasn't all that interested in seeing another WWII film, I felt like Saving Private Ryan was the best of the genre, and there was nowhere to go but down from there. And even though I was born 30 years after the war, I thought I knew most everything about it. But this being a Clint Eastwood film, I knew I'd get around to it eventually.



The taking of the Iwo Jima beach and the subsequent war scenes were extremely familiar to Saving Private Ryan, but beyond that, the film offered something new. I didn't know the story behind America's most famous photo. The selling of these heroes, simply because they appeared in the photo, to the American people as a reason to buy war bonds was the most interesting thing about the film. I'm fairly immune to the violence of war films, unless I'm devoted to the characters, and since the only ones we really get to know survive the film, the war scenes didn't pack the emotional punch that Eastwood was going for.

It was a decent film worth the time it took to watch it, mostly it made me excited to see Letters from Iwo Jima, from everything I've heard, it's the superior film. I think it will hit on that emotional level, that Flags didn't.