Letters from Iwo Jima 2006

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: By placing us on the opposite side of the battlefield, the movie forces us to approach it from a fresh perspective. The technique also lends Letters an uncommon timelessness. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: In washed-out tones of brown and khaki, mimicking the colors of the troops' uniforms (blood, used sparingly, is startlingly crimson, seeming to sear a hole in the screen), the film plays out in a mood of resignation and control. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The subject, the technique and the maturity blend as one. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: This second picture is so different from the first, and such a rare, remarkable achievement in itself, it could have stood squarely on its own. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: It is the second, and artistically superior, half of a single epic film that springs from a single, stunning act of compassionate imagination. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Far superior to its companion piece, Letters is a grim and humane film that has to be counted among the director's better efforts. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: [Director] Eastwood [shows] how people make impossible choices with dreadful repercussions. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: [This] absorbing and thoughtful take on the plight of the trapped, desperate and suicidal Japanese troops, outstrips its companion piece. That's not a statement on patriotism; it addresses the nature of Eastwood's approach and basic human nature. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Eloquent, bloody, and daringly simple, the movie examines notions of wartime glory as closely as Flags of Our Fathers dissected heroism. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The laconic, pitiless way Eastwood shot the violence of battle underscores what a waste it all is, underlines the futility that so many have to die because of the misguided ideology of a few in leadership positions. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Indirectly but cogently comment on our experiences of other movies. Having Japanese soldiers as heroes allows us to reconsider the didacticism we've been handed in the past. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Where Flags heaved its characters through war and psychic trauma without first allowing us all to get acquainted, Letters takes such care with its protagonists that they awaken and descend from the screen. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: In its emotional simplicity and straightforward narrative punch, Letters also harks back to what was best about those war movies. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Letters is a work of whetted craft and judgment, tempered by Eastwood's years of life, moviemaking and the potent tango of the two. It is the work of a mature filmmaker willing to entertain the true power of the cinema. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Watanabe is appropriately noble and regal, if a bit stiff at times; but it is Ninomiya's grunt soldier who gives the film its soul. Alternately philosophical, humorous, terrified and crafty, he is everyman trying to survive hell. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: It takes a filmmaker of uncommon control and mature grace to say so much with so little superfluous movement, and Eastwood triumphs in the challenge. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: It skillfully avoids the usual war movie cliches while providing multiple points of entry. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: If Flags of Our Fathers is about heroism -- why we need it, how we create it -- then Letters From Iwo Jima is about honor, its importance, and its folly. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Eastwood may not be a primarily political filmmaker, but his celebration of men fighting a lost war is timeless, as well as urgently topical. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Superbly acted, unblinking and unhysterical, it looks beyond politics into the hearts and minds of the men we needed to call 'the enemy,' and lets us see ourselves. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Too old for another Dirty Harry movie, Eastwood embraced the role of brooding, fatalistic American Master -- and, I'm bound to say, is finally beginning to wear it more convincingly. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Eastwood's second Iwo Jima film is far better than the first. Apart from some flashbacks to the commanding officer's cadet days, its unity of time and place gives it a powerful drive, and a tragic feeling of predestination. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Letters isn't about numbers or the battle or even the morality of war. It's about the sanctity of life and how we value our own. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: One of the better movies of this maddeningly overcrowded holiday season. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The proper way to appreciate Letters and Flags is to treat them as complimentary halves of the same epic movie, a Godfather war epic. One half is plainly more ambitious than the other, but both have virtues that distinguish them. Read more

Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Inquirer: Side by side, though, Eastwood's movies are a sobering marvel: the massive military effort, suffering and sacrifice, the extremes of human behavior that war produces. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Although Eastwood does an adequate job of developing the characters into more than paper-thin soldiers, this isn't a character-based piece, and that limits its effectiveness. Read more

Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com: In both his films, Eastwood empathizes with the 'expendable' soldier on the ground, the 'poor bastard' who is only a pawn in a war conceived by generals and politicians, some of whom have never come anywhere near a battlefield or a combat zone. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Eastwood is so busy humanizing Japanese soldiers that he ends up rewriting history. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Though it could have gone in that direction, Eastwood's film isn't an existential endgame drama. He's still more rooted in Howard Hawks than Samuel Beckett and in many ways this is a conventional war drama. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The unspoken message of the film is that war is a battle of competing symbols and ideologies that have no meaning. We create artificial divisions to hide the fact that we are all the same under the skin, with the same hopes, desires and fears. Read more

TIME Magazine: ...A unique, bifocal view of ground war -- the men who fight it, the propaganda attending it, the awful way it ends. Read more

Wally Hammond, Time Out: An even more sombre affair, as beautifully restrained as the earlier film but also, despite its scenes of battle, death, suicide and suffering, shockingly intimate. Read more

Stephen Garrett, Time Out: The movie's sense of doom is powerfully conveyed; one graphic scene has weeping soldiers blowing themselves up with grenades. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: It takes a filmmaker possessed of a rare, almost alchemic, blend of maturity, wisdom and artistic finesse to create such an intimate, moving and spare war film as Clint Eastwood has done. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Taken together, Flags and Letters represent a genuinely imposing achievement, one that looks at war unflinchingly -- that does not deny its necessity but above all laments the human loss it entails. Read more

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: Eastwood seems less concerned with provocation than with contemplation, of a popular military campaign and its supposed days of glory. The second film completes and deepens the first. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: In the last half-hour, the story, like the Japanese, loses its way; lacking any clear-cut goals except survival, the film becomes repetitive. Letters From Iwo Jima is a necessary movie; too bad it's not a great movie. Read more