Movie #17 - Flags of Our Fathers

On paper, putting together the ensemble team of Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Haggis should result in a tremendous blockbuster. Overall, this movie does not disappoint.

Flags of Our Fathers follows the lives of six men who were involved in the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, a pivotal battle won by the United States during WWII. What wasn't known at the time, is that the United States were virtually broke with the billions of dollars spent on WWII and the fact that many of its citizens grew weary of the whole campaign.

The movie follows three plot lines, which is quite common in Paul Haggis screenplays. It follows the lives of Ryan Phillippe (John "Doc" Bradley), Jesse Bradford (Rene Gagnon), and Adam Beach (Ira Hayes). All three men were involved in the raising of the famous flag, however, how this event affects these men is really a wonderful story to tell.

There are pockets of action sequences which are quite powerful and are inserted at strong points throughout the film. This provides the audience with the needed change of pace to maintain interest while at the same time, discuss the negative effects of the war on these three individual characters.

Brief cameos of war piece veteran actors such as Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) and Neil McDonough (Band of Brothers) show Spielberg's influence on the film. This enhanced the feel of the movie as both actors have been cast in various war pictures in the past and provide a strong representation for both the action sequences and the drama of the film.

Strong performances were achieved by both Phillippe and Beach. Both men were able to capture the characters being portrayed by the film. Since it was a true story being depicted in the plot lines, it must've been difficult to develop the characters any further. By the end of the film, you truly believed Phillippe and Beach were the men telling the story, which made the film powerful in the end.

I read somewhere that you needed to watch this movie first before watching Letters from Iwo Jima. This way, you could not only understand both perspectives of the story (United States and Japanese points of view), but could appreciate how important this battle was to both sides.

Having the trio of Haggis, Spielberg, and Eastwood work on these two films was a treat to the theatrical audience. Although from the box office perspective, both films didn't live up to expectations, as a fan of the collaboration, I am glad that these films achieved their goals - to tell the true stories from the heroes of this great battle of WWII history.

Reference: I originally published this article on Helium.com