Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Region of Honor

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Letters from Iwo Jima on DVD

Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima is significantly more interesting than its predecessor, Flags of Our Fathers, not only because it's more focused, but also because it raises some interesting issues of cultural representation. Eastwood seems to have been very careful in his depiction, hiring the Japanese-American screenwriter Iris Yamashita to handle the details (though Westerner Paul Haggis has a co-story credit). Now we have Japanese characters that misunderstand and misrepresent their American counterparts, believing that they're cowardly and undisciplined. But amazingly, Letters from Iwo Jima is still a Clint Eastwood piece, full of his singular bravado. One of the key themes in the film is honor, which we can assume has been very well defined by previous Japanese tradition, but which takes on new dimensions in war. But this film's major achievement is in the much less discussed arena of cultural representation. (Note: Please read my full-length review at cinematical.com)

Steven Spielberg co-produced both this and Flags of Our Fathers.

DVD Details: Warner Home Video's two-disc set comes with a trailer for Flags of Our Fathers (of course), plus Ocean's Thirteen and American Pastime. (There is no English-dubbed track, just in case anyone was wondering.) Extras include Red Sun, Black Sand: The Making of Letters from Iwo Jima (20 minutes) which includes interviews with Eastwood. We also get The Faes of Combat: The Cast of Letters from Iwo Jima (18 minutes), and Images from the Frontlines: The Photography of Letters from Iwo Jima (4 minutes), plus footage from the Tokyo world premiere and press conference.

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Shido Nakamura, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Yuki Matsuzaki, Hiroshi Watanabe, Takumi Bando, Nobumasa Sakagami, Takashi Yamaguchi, Nae Yuuki
Written by: Iris Yamashita, based on a story by Iris Yamashita, Paul Haggis
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
MPAA Rating: R for graphic war violence
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Running Time: 141 minutes
Date: December 20, 2006