[Heibges]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I missed Flags Of Our Fathers, but Letters From Iwo Jima in my opinion puts Eastwood up there on the list of Great Directors Of All Time. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen - gripping, exciting, big (great CGI images of the American landings and B-24s bombing Suribachi) and small (as in intimate portraits of the individuals' home lives).

You might want to make sure you know your Japanese WWII history, though; when the the new commander arrives unanounced and everyone is afraid he'll be angry at their having no reception prepared, he says (paraphrasing from memory) "After what happened to Yamamoto, they didn't even tell ME when I was coming!"

As I said, it impressed me as one of the best I've seen. I can't recommend it enough. Two-pack? Even if Flags isn't nearly as good, I think I'll buy it that way.

I loved Iwo Jima, although I didn't cry through the entire movie like I did with Flags. I thought one of the main points of the movie was that almost the entire officer corps acted like a bunch of "Himmelreiters", and like Himmelreiter were totally incompetent when it came to professional military knowledge.

And you had captains talking back to generals. In the US Army captains don't talk back to majors. In the Japanese Army it seemed that "bad stuff" happened when officers were around, but in the US Marines "bad stuff" only happened when officers were not around.