"Letters From Iwo Jima" is rated R for strong scenes of wartime violence (shootings, stabbings, explosive mayhem and acts of ritual suicide), graphic gore, scattered profanity and crude references, and some brief drug content (use of pharmaceuticals and painkillers). Japanese television star Ninomiya is terrific as well, as is Tsuyoshi Ihara, who plays an Olympic athlete serving his country's cause. The film also benefits from another forceful performance given by Watanabe. Screenwriter Iris Yamashita took inspiration from the book "Picture Letters From Commander in Chief," which featured letters written by the real-life Kuribayashi, and her dialogue has a ring of truth.Ĭonsequently, this is heady, powerful stuff - even if the modern-day, wraparound sequences do seem a little familiar.
#Letters from iwo jima movie series
His series of rather candid letters to his wife are the basis for the film's title. The film also focuses on the character of Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker pressed into service as a soldier.
They also believe their best defense is to guard the beachfront, which he rejects as an option. Kuribayashi faces opposition from his fellow officers because they consider him and his methods to be too "Western" (since he studied abroad). He has just weeks to prepare a united front to oppose the invading U.S. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who's been assigned as the new commander at the Japanese Iwo Jima base. Ken Watanabe ("The Last Samurai," "Batman Begins") stars as Gen. But "Letters" is shown almost entirely from the viewpoint of Japanese soldiers. Armed Forces' battle against the Imperial Japanese Army. Like "Flags," this war drama re-creates the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, a strategic area in the U.S. It actually resembles work by the late Akira Kurosawa, whose work Eastwood admires.
In fact, there are times when you're hard-pressed to recognize it as an Eastwood movie. In a way, it's more akin to Eastwood's "jazzier" films, such as "Bird" (1988) and "Million Dollar Baby" (2004), and less like the blustery "Mystic River" (2003). Where "Flags" tried too hard to be earnest and beat the audiences over the head to offer a message, "Letters" has a subtler and lovelier, almost poetic tone. Perspective is the one, real difference between director Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" and its companion piece, "Flags of Our Fathers." But it turns out to be a pretty big difference.
It is such a dark film it feels like we’re sucked into a gloomy and endless black hole of the island. Borderline black & white, it captures the starkness, the cold and somber look of being on the beach of Iwo Jima during the pivot of World War II. LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA - **** - Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara in Japanese, with English subtitles rated R (violence, gore, profanity, vulgarity, brief drugs). Possibly the most desaturated color film ever to be made.
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