LETTERS FROM IWO ZIMA

Director:Clint Eastwood

Cast :Ken Watanabe ,Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Shido Nakamura

During World War II, Japanese were characterized in the media as sneaky and fanatical, almost sub-human and many had a hard time adjusting to our being allies after the war. Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima seeks to balance the equation. The film takes place in 1944 during the fight for the island that was deemed strategic for both sides, a fight that ended with 21,000 Japanese and 6,000 American casualties. Spoken in Japanese with English subtitles, dramatizes the battle from the Japanese point of view. They are depicted as soldiers who loved their families but were victims of Japanese militarism, forced to adhere to the Bushido code of serving the Emperor by dying honorably rather than preserving one's life.

Throughout the film, the Japanese soldiers write letters home, most of which they know will never reach their destination. The hero of the film is Commander Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), an American trained Japanese General who was outnumbered by a ratio of five-to-one yet fought off the US invasion for over a month without air or naval support. He is portrayed as a warrior with dignity and courage who was called an American sympathizer by some officers but who only wanted to give his men a fighting chance.Assisting in the preparations for an expected American invasion, are Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) and Lieutenant Ito (Shido Nakamur). Ito is a fanatical warrior who wears land mines around his shoulders and vows to destroy an American tank by pretending to be a corpse. Kuribayashi, countermanding the order to build trenches on the beach to resist the invasion, orders the soldiers to build underground tunnels in the hard rocks. While knowing the battle is a lost cause because of the American advantage in technology and numbers, he hopes to inflict enough casualties on the American troops that they will lose the will to go on.

We get to know Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a Japanese soldier who left his job as a baker and his pregnant wife to join the military. In a flashback, Saigo learns that he is called to serve and is unwilling to leave his wife and their unborn child, but, encouraged by his neighbors, is forced to surrender to the idea of it being a privilege to fight. He stands out as a soldier who values life more than an outmoded code of honor. After a day of shoveling trenches, he writes to his wife, "Am I digging my own grave?" and wonders why he should die trying to kill Americans.Shown in a faded color palette that is almost black and white, Letters From Iwo Jima is a beautifully executed film, though I did find it a bit overlong and the battle scenes repetitious. Additionally, the film may go a bit too far in its attempt to show fairness to both sides, idealizing Kuribayashi and Nishi and inventing an incident in which American soldiers left in charge of two Japanese soldiers who surrendered, ruthlessly shoot them to death rather than stand guard all night.

Letters From Iwo Jima serves as a powerful reminder of our common humanity and makes clear the insanity of war and how it corrupts everyone involved.

This is probably the most emotionally effecting and powerful movie I've ever seen. Never has a movie effected me like this. Never has a war film shown the horror of war like this before. The music was the same throughout the entire movie but it had a great impact. They had a piano and trumpet version. It sounded like a funeral which fit perfectly because Iwo Jima was lost before it even started. The sound editing is great (won Academy Award). The battle scenes are very well done. The only flaw was that they didn't show a timeline. The Japanese held the island for 36 days but it seems like 5. The only other flaw is that they don't make clear exactly how many men there are.

To sum it all up, "Letters from Iwo Jima" is one of the greatest war films ever made, and is easily does the best job of depicting war as something that harms all involved that I have ever seen. Clint Eastwood has, with this achievement, engraved his name as one of the greatest American directors in film history