Letters from Iwo Jima

I went to watch this film with very high expectations and was not disappointed. Maybe it was because it was in Japanese or maybe it was because of the hue and color the movie was shot in... I really don't know. All I know is that this film touches your soul in places which its companion film, Flags of our Fathers, did not even know existed. This not a knock against Flags. Flags was taken with a Western mindset laced with the kind of melodrama that is always visible in most American war films. Letters bow to the Eastern sentiment. What is startling is that both are directed by the same person. Clint Eastwood does a fine job of realistically portraying the US assault on Iwo Jima from the Japanese standpoint without a hint of partiality.

Thank you, Mr. Eastwood, Mr Haggis...
Arigato, Yamashita san, Watanabe san, Ninomiya san, Ihara san....

Rating: * * * *