FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
(four stars)
Shot seen ’round the world.
Running time: 131 minutes. Rated R (graphic war violence and carnage, profanity). At the Ziegfeld, the Empire, the Union Square, others.
CLINT Eastwood storms Mt. Oscar again with “Flags of Our Fathers,” a stirring ode to American heroism during the battle of Iwo Jima – which also pointedly dissects how that heroism was cynically packaged for public consumption.
Working on the largest scale of his remarkable career with a film that surpasses the peaks of “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby” in its visual eloquence and thematic potency, the erstwhile Dirty Harry – at 76! – continues to defy characterization as a filmmaker.
Eastwood homes in on the contemporary resonance in World War II’s bloodiest battle and the p.r. offensive that followed.
Iwo Jima, a volcanic island that served as a key Japanese stronghold, entered the vocabulary because of an iconic image – AP photographer Joe Rosenthal’s endlessly reproduced shot of six servicemen raising the flag on Mount Suribachi (and echoed in another famous photo taken at Ground Zero after 9/11).
Rosenthal’s Pulitzer-winning photo didn’t actually show the first flag raised on that mountain, and there was initial confusion over exactly who was in the picture, in which no faces were visible.
But to quote a famous line from a John Ford Western that Eastwood has clearly taken to heart: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Which is more or less what government officials eager to rally a war-weary, cash-strapped nation for a final push in the Pacific did.
The three survivors among the six flag-raisers – Navy medic John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillipe) and Marines Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) – were shipped home against their wills and sent out on a cross-country tour that sold $20 billion worth of war bonds.
Eastwood deftly cuts between harrowing battle scenes that rival “Saving Private Ryan” (Steven Spielberg co-produced this film as well) and the gaudy, flag-waving tour.
The flag-raisers – increasingly uncomfortable about being labeled heroes while so many of their comrades died, and guilty because the government repeatedly turns down their pleas to admit it misidentified one of the dead flag-raisers – were forced to re-enact the picture on a papier-maché mountain as thousands cheered.
The director and screenwriters Paul Haggis (“Million Dollar Baby”) and William Broyles Jr. don’t hit you over the head with it and pays ample tribute to these members of the Greatest Generation.
But it’s not hard to connect the dots to Jessica Lynch and the infamous “Mission Accomplished” photo op.
Greatly abetted by Tom Stern’s desaturated cinematography, Eastwood marshals a huge, well-chosen cast that includes vivid work by Barry Pepper and Paul Walker in small roles, as well as such vets as John Slattery, Harve Presnell and Jon Polito (as Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in an eye-popping re-creation of Times Square by the late, legendary production designer Henry Bumstead).
Phillipe is rock solid as the self-effacing Bradley, striking contrast with the more outgoing and more opportunistic Gagnon, who because of his movie star looks became the favorite of a public.
The movie’s emotional heart, though, is the tragic Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona who suffered casual racism at the same time he was being hailed as a hero – and eventually drank himself to death.
Beach (“Windtalkers”) gives a tremendously moving, Oscar-caliber performance as Hayes, portrayed by Tony Curtis in an earlier movie and celebrated in a song performed by both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.
Eastwood, remarkably, has already completed a companion film to “Flags of Our Fathers” (due out early next year), examining Iwo Jima from the Japanese side. If it’s half as good as this one, it will be one of the best films of 2007.