Movie · 2006 · War, Drama, History · 2h 15m · R · English
Curator score: 5.3/10 (187K ratings)
A single shot can end the war.
Overview
There were five Marines and one Navy Corpsman photographed raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. This is the story of three of the six surviving servicemen - John 'Doc' Bradley, Pvt. Rene Gagnon and Pvt. Ira Hayes - who fought in the battle to take Iwo Jima from the Japanese.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.3/10
IMDb: 7.1/10
Letterboxd: 3.45/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 76%
Metacritic: 79
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Clint Eastwood
Production
DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, Malpaso Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Paul Walker, Robert Patrick, Neal McDonough, Melanie Lynskey, Tom McCarthy, Chris Bauer, Judith Ivey, Myra Turley, Joseph Cross, Benjamin Walker, Alessandro Mastrobuono, Scott Eastwood, Stark Sands
Where to watch
fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential
Curator Review
Verdict
A thoughtful, anti-propaganda war drama that’s more interested in the cost of being turned into a symbol than in battlefield spectacle. It can feel a little didactic and uneven, but the perspective is sharp, humane, and memorable.
Best for
viewers interested in the politics of war memory and media imagery
fans of sober, character-driven war dramas
people who like films that question patriotism and hero-making
audiences drawn to Eastwood’s restrained, unsentimental style
Skip if
you want nonstop combat action
you prefer emotionally expansive or highly kinetic war films
you dislike films that are more reflective than dramatic
you want a straightforward heroic WWII story
Overview
Flags of Our Fathers is less a battle film than a study of what happens after the battle, when an image becomes a national myth and the men inside it are flattened by it. Eastwood treats the famous flag-raising as the start of a second war: one fought in newspapers, on fundraising tours, and in the public imagination. That angle gives the film its bite, even when the script explains itself a little too much.
Worth noting
The movie’s strongest material comes from its skepticism. It understands that heroism can be manufactured, sold, and then used up, while the people who were there are left carrying the damage. The war scenes are effective but deliberately not the point; the real subject is how memory gets edited into propaganda and how that process erases ordinary human fear.
Bottom line
It’s not Eastwood’s most emotionally fluid film, and some stretches feel more dutiful than alive. Still, the craft is steady, the moral stance is clear, and the film lingers because it refuses to let the iconic photograph stand in for the messy reality behind it.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Tao A (4★) · 525 likes
Anti-propaganda film disguised as propaganda film is the only good kind of propaganda film. And this is that.
comrade_yui (4★) · 385 likes
eastwood understands that america isn't a country built on a system, a morality or even a religion, but a country constructed of images, of moments frozen in time. human life only matters insofar as it can produce these images. the actual intricacies of warfare: the bloated carcasses of tanks, the bodies half-buried in mud, the heat of a bullet whizzing past your neck; those don't get photographed as easily as a flag. that flag will still be there 100 years later, but the human beings who raised it will be long forgotten.
Kylo (2.5★) · 135 likes
So many family faces, from Ryan Philippe to Paul Walker. Not Clint Eastwood’s best work. Not as engaging as I hoped for, and ugly to look at.
chavel (3★) · 119 likes
To exert their victory at Iwo Jima, a platoon of marines raised a flag on Mount Suribachi that became an instantly iconic photograph once it found its’ way into American newspapers. Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach play the three men lofted to American Hero status which they in privacy refuted (they were just trying to not die during combat), for them they just wanted their veteran stories of confusion and anxieties heard. The U.S. military wants to use… more To exert their victory at Iwo Jima, a platoon of marines raised a flag on Mount Suribachi that became an instantly iconic photograph once it found its’ way into American newspapers. Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach play the three men lofted to American Hero status which they in privacy refuted (they were just trying to not die during combat), for them they just wanted their veteran stories of confusion and anxieties heard. The U.S. military wants to use… more
Filipe Furtado (3.5★) · 109 likes
Far too discursive and under dramatized to be Eastwood at his best, but he has always been very good at movies on images even if Haggis script spell things out too much (Ang Lee's Billy Lynn covers a lot of the same territory with less highs, but less didacticism). The combat scenes feel strangely off (I wonder if the main reason he set out to make Letters From Iwo Jima was because he felt a physical dimension was missing here),… more Far too discursive and under dramatized to be Eastwood at his best, but he has always been very good at movies on images even if Haggis script spell things out too much (Ang Lee's Billy Lynn covers a lot of the same territory with less highs, but less didacticism). The combat scenes feel strangely off (I wonder if the main reason he set out to make Letters From Iwo Jima was because he felt a physical dimension was missing here),… more