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Directed by: Clint Eastwood Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase The point of this movie is basically, "Hey, when we Americans were being told to kill the Japanese, they were being told to kill us, too, and most of them wanted to be home with their moms and wives and kids just as much as we did." I am the complete opposite of a war movie buff; I've probably seen the military-movie-parody embedded within Kevin Kline's In and Out more times than all the actual war movies I've seen, combined. I saw Letters from Iwo Jima because of the Oscar noms (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay) and I'm really glad I did. It starts out feeling a bit thin, incorporating neither swelling background music nor sweeping bravado as General Kuribayashi (Watanabe) lands on the island of Iwo Jima to lead a military that has been, he finds out quickly, sorely mismanaged to this point. The main face of the Japanese soldiers is Saigo (Ninomiya), a poor baker who would happily let the island fall to the enemy or just to the bottom of the ocean if it meant he could go back home to his wife and newborn daughter, whom he's never met. The story of Japan's defeat at Iwo Jima is told mostly straightforwardly. All modern-era moviegoers will hopefully recognize that Japan's defeat is inevitable, but that makes their efforts even more riveting than they would be if we knew we were observing the victors, as in most films. The characters tend to be drawn fairly simply, but are nonetheless engaging. Embellishment comes from a few flashbacks which overlap with the letters being written home by Kuribayashi and Saigo, dictated in voice-over. It's a great movie, and totally at home in the 2007 Best Picture category. RATING: 4.5 PROS: Engaging, provocative, strong acting, good effects CONS: Despair and bleakness can be a bit hard to take for 2 hours straight ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/
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Feb 11, 2007 05:00
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 21:14 |
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I was horribly, horribly dissapointed by this movie. The dialogue feels forced, as if every sentence is crafted for its effect on the audience rather than as a natural expression of the characters. None of the characters are terribly interesting or do anything that is very surprising; in fact, instead of having names, you can call them by cliches. Scared Guy Who Just Wants To Go Home. Scared Guy's Friend. Noble Commander Who Loves His Men And Country. Jackass Officer. Nice Officer Who Knows Americans Are People Too. rear end in a top hat American Who Shoots Japanese Prisoner. They each illustrate a point; they don't come to life. I didn't care about a single one of them. The pacing of the movie felt very stilted to me, with a long setup that had far, far too many shots of Watanabe staring at maps with his "I am strategizing" face on without really telling us what exactly his strategy was, too many scenes where characters are clearly having conversations for our benefit so that we can learn about how bad things are in Japan, how badly the war effort is going, or how much Japanese people care about honor, and many flashbacks, some of which work, and some of which are simply annoying or unnecessary. Ultimately, I don't feel that the movie explored the themes that were most interesting. The fact that Japanese soldiers were also humans, with wives and children and a reason to go home, is not revolutionary or particularly interesting. Of course they did. Everyone knows that the Japanese concept of honor is different from the American, so to do little more than include lengthy pep talks about dying for the sacred soil of Japan and having banzai attacks and suicide parties is not revealing. To me, the most interesting question occurs when Watanabe's commander is arguing with a subordinate who believes that Watanabe's strategy of digging into the caves for a prolonged defensive is less honorable than a banzai suicide charge of the beaches. We are meant to sympathize with Watanabe, who is being practical and more sound in his military strategy. It is left at that. However, to me the issue was far more interesting. Watanabe knows that they cannot win on Iwo Jima, and that the war is lost anyway. So why not die in a banzai attack? Why is it more honorable to plan an intricate defense that kills many Americans and leads to much prolonged suffering for your own men? Obviously he can't surrender, but he ultimately does lead his men in a banzai attack, and they all die. How is he more noble than the admiral who wanted to do that to start off with? I would have loved it if the movie explored this more, but instead we get beat over the head with how much like Americans the Japanese were, except for their tendency to commit suicide. Not a bad movie to rent, definitely nothing close to the best movie I've seen this year. I understand none of the love for a film with bland, uninteresting characters and a terrible screenplay. I guess I shouldn't have expected any subtlety from a Paul Haggis script (For god's sake, he has us build sympathy for a character by having him refuse to shoot a cute little puppy). But I thought, and still think, that this premise had potential. Too bad it's wasted. Pros: Watanabe is ok, I guess, although his character is like a watered-down version of the guy in the Last Samurai. The visuals are pretty fantastic The island and Mt. Suribachi come to life as characters in a cool way Great premise Cons: Uninteresting characters Bad dialogue All the subtlety of a sledgehammer 2.0/5
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Feb 16, 2007 03:32
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