Benefit
Bluelighter
Finally, a Spielberg-produced war epic touching on the Pacific Theater!
I was psyched when I heard Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were working on producing a companion miniseries to Band of Brothers that takes place in the South Pacific; that info seems to be bunk now, but this Eastwood-helmed project is a good substitute.
My expectations were high for Flags of our Fathers; I daresay they were impossibly high. I wanted it to be essentially exactly the same as Band of Brothers, while still standing on its own merits and showing me something new. Predictably, those expectations were not met; probably because expecting a 2 hour movie to be the same as a 10 hour episodic saga is stupid.
Even so, setting all that aside and evaluating the film from a fresh perspective, it came up a tad short in my estimation. The costuming, set design, effects, scene composition, lighting, sound editing, action sequences and cinematography are terrific. The acting is merely adequate; nothing about the performances stands out as being really good or really bad.
Pacing and plotting is where it got bogged down. I think Paul Haggis is tremendously overrated as a screenwriter, and it shows. I would have liked to see more action on Iwo Jima; more fighting, more character development. Other than Mike, Iggy and the 3 surviving flag-raisers, I had trouble differentiating any of the Marines and I am a very careful observer. It's hard to empathize with characters you can't recognize.
To expand on that point, the scenes back in the US where the government is using the flag-raisers to bang the war bond drum would have benefitted from some cuts. The juxtaposition of civilized US society (where the protagonists are exploited in a mechanical fashion) and the brutal reality of war-torn Iwo Jima (where a superhuman camaraderie between men exists) works to great effect. And while this contrast also illuminates the deeply tragic truth that "the real heroes are dead on that island" it is handled somewhat clumsily by Haggis. You don't need to keep quick-cutting from Iwo Jima to a ritzy gala in some upscale hotel in New York to make the audience understand that plucking a soldier out of the fighting and parading him around to secure funding is a sleazy thing to do. We get it!
Instead of making a point about the opportunistic shortcomings of government, the film should have developed a more concentrated focus on the relationship between the young, scared-shitless Marines doing the fighting. The best parts of the film took place on Iwo Jima; the actual flag-raisings (both of them) were terrific. Conversely, the introductory segment in Camp Tawara was very badly done.
Those wide shots of the armada unloading on Iwo Jima were breathtaking.
Incidentally, my grandfather served in the Pacific Theater with the 4th Marine Regiment. He was one of the first Marines to hit the beach when the US took back Guam, and he confided in me about his experiences shortly before he died. World War II is a truly fascinating epoch in the history of this planet and I love these movies when they are done right.
I was psyched when I heard Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were working on producing a companion miniseries to Band of Brothers that takes place in the South Pacific; that info seems to be bunk now, but this Eastwood-helmed project is a good substitute.
My expectations were high for Flags of our Fathers; I daresay they were impossibly high. I wanted it to be essentially exactly the same as Band of Brothers, while still standing on its own merits and showing me something new. Predictably, those expectations were not met; probably because expecting a 2 hour movie to be the same as a 10 hour episodic saga is stupid.
Even so, setting all that aside and evaluating the film from a fresh perspective, it came up a tad short in my estimation. The costuming, set design, effects, scene composition, lighting, sound editing, action sequences and cinematography are terrific. The acting is merely adequate; nothing about the performances stands out as being really good or really bad.
Pacing and plotting is where it got bogged down. I think Paul Haggis is tremendously overrated as a screenwriter, and it shows. I would have liked to see more action on Iwo Jima; more fighting, more character development. Other than Mike, Iggy and the 3 surviving flag-raisers, I had trouble differentiating any of the Marines and I am a very careful observer. It's hard to empathize with characters you can't recognize.
To expand on that point, the scenes back in the US where the government is using the flag-raisers to bang the war bond drum would have benefitted from some cuts. The juxtaposition of civilized US society (where the protagonists are exploited in a mechanical fashion) and the brutal reality of war-torn Iwo Jima (where a superhuman camaraderie between men exists) works to great effect. And while this contrast also illuminates the deeply tragic truth that "the real heroes are dead on that island" it is handled somewhat clumsily by Haggis. You don't need to keep quick-cutting from Iwo Jima to a ritzy gala in some upscale hotel in New York to make the audience understand that plucking a soldier out of the fighting and parading him around to secure funding is a sleazy thing to do. We get it!
Instead of making a point about the opportunistic shortcomings of government, the film should have developed a more concentrated focus on the relationship between the young, scared-shitless Marines doing the fighting. The best parts of the film took place on Iwo Jima; the actual flag-raisings (both of them) were terrific. Conversely, the introductory segment in Camp Tawara was very badly done.
Those wide shots of the armada unloading on Iwo Jima were breathtaking.
Incidentally, my grandfather served in the Pacific Theater with the 4th Marine Regiment. He was one of the first Marines to hit the beach when the US took back Guam, and he confided in me about his experiences shortly before he died. World War II is a truly fascinating epoch in the history of this planet and I love these movies when they are done right.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
