Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

Just like its counterpart ‘Flags of our Fathers’, the film is equally monochromatic grey with virtually no color. It is equally overlong, the action few and far between and very slow paced. The film has significantly more character and emotional depth than ‘Flags’, though, but still, nothing happens until 42 minutes into the movie. It is the same war, the same island, but a different perspective, and I did find that very interesting.

I’m baffled at how that godawful ‘Flags’ film had a $90 million budget, and this film’s budget was only $19 million, yet so much better. The photography and cinematography is still just as bland. This might be a Japanese language film, but it is still an American film…

In Japanese