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Flags of Our Fathers DVD Review

by Kam Williams

Eastwood Iwo Jima Epic Out on DVD

On the morning of February 19, 1945, in the wake of 74 consecutive days of pounding from the air by B-29 bombers, over 100,000 U.S. soldiers mounted an amphibious assault on Iwo Jima, a tiny Far East island about a third of the size of Manhattan. The Marines who landed there that fateful day encountered mines, booby traps, and much stronger resistance than they had bargained for because the bombardment had failed to soften-up the fortification as anticipated.

With Flags of Our Fathers, one would hope that Clint Eastwood would have some reason to make another Iwo Jima movie besides resurrecting the same sort of patriotic claptrap already dished out ad nauseam in war flicks like John Wayne's Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). But regrettably, Eastwood chose to not edify his audience in any meaningful way.

Perhaps the movie's most glaring omission involves the absence of any African-American soldiers when, truth be told, about 1000 black soldiers took part in the assault. The upshot is that Flags of Our Fathers is a 21st Century version of the state-sanctioned, pro-war propaganda designed to instill a sense of patriotism in the Baby Boom Generation back when they were impressionable babies. The violence may no longer be sanitized, but its color-coded depictions of heroism remain unchanged.

The story revolves around a Private Ryan-like mandate to bring back to the States the soldiers who had erected the flag in the suddenly-famous photograph. Why? In order to exploit the vets sudden celebrity to sell government bonds on behalf of the war effort. This tedious timewaster's only tension revolves around a seemingly meaningless controversy, namely, whether one of the deceased soldiers holding the pole might have been misidentified.

With blacks invisible, Flags of Our Fathers devotes its express ethnic insensitivity in the direction of other ethnic minorities. Thus, Japanese are repeatedly referred to as "Japs," while the token non-white GI, Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a Native-American, is presented as an offensive combination of two stereotypes: "The Noble Savage" and "The Drunken Indian."

What's the point of making a pair of historical epics, if both merely reflect and reinforce deep-seeded racist attitudes rather than attempt to teach tolerance, understanding and an appreciation of our cultural differences?

Fair (1 star)
Rated R for expletives, ethnic slurs, and the graphic depiction of the carnage of war)
Running time: 132 minutes
Studio: Paramount Home Video