Flags of our Fathers

Review by Guy Davis

The more thought I give to Clint Eastwood’s new film Flags of Our Fathers, the more I come to realise it’s a clunky and unwieldy piece of work. It’s clearly heartfelt and thoughtful, which makes it all the more unfortunate that Eastwood’s approach to telling this story is so deeply flawed.

This recounting of the tale behind the iconic World War II photograph of six military men struggling to raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima - a photograph that rallied a dispirited American public behind the country’s cash-strapped war effort - has all the hallmarks of a prestige production, but somehow it fails to make its points clearly or coherently.

Eastwood and writers Paul Haggis and William Broyles, Jr seem to be looking at the nature of heroism with Flags of Our Fathers, trying to reconcile the larger-than-life imagery that inspires and motivates people with the often commonplace occurrences behind the imagery.

It’s an interesting subject - this disconnection between the fact and the legend - but there are only a few times that the film really connects with it.

With World War II dragging on, the American people were becoming disillusioned and sales of ‘war bonds’ - designed to finance the Allied military - were sluggish. However, the Iwo Jima photograph proved inspirational, and three of the young men in the picture were called back from combat to travel the US and convince the average American to dig deep and buy more bonds.

For the three men - medic John ‘Doc’ Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), messenger Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Marine Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) - the tour proved disheartening. They were feted as heroes but felt guilty about leaving their comrades in the thick of the conflict, and their guilt was enhanced by the fact that the other three men in the photo had already been killed on Iwo Jima.

But without the money from the sale of war bonds, the US war effort would grind to a halt. So the three men were compelled to present an image of all-American heroism, even as it tore them up inside to do so.

It’s obvious that Eastwood seeks to dispel some of the myths surrounding the Iwo Jima photograph while simultaneously celebrating the courage of the combat veteran, but it’s an approach that just doesn’t play. The point is either made too vaguely or too obviously, with only one or two occasions in the film actually conveying the message with some clarity.

The moments that work best in Flags of Our Fathers are the warfare sequences on Iwo Jima - they pay an obvious debt to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg is a producer of this film), but Eastwood has also take the time to give the audience a sense of the combatants’ youth - many seem barely out their teens - and the camaraderie they have forged under fire.

There’s none of the same compassion or understanding in the scenes documenting Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes’s bond drive, which quickly becomes repetitive and almost pointless. Add to this Beach’s lapses into overacting as the alcoholic Hayes, and Flags of Our Fathers begins to lose much of its impact.

That’s too bad, because there’s a idea worth investigating somewhere deep within this film. It reveals itself every so often - sometimes in Eastwood’s direction, sometimes in the fine, understated work of the underrated Phillippe - but for the most part Flags of Our Fathers is a disappointment.

2.5 out of 5

Flags of our Fathers
Australian release: 2nd November, 2006
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, Jamie Bell, Ben Walker
Director: Clint Eastwood
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