Letters from Iwo Jima

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Movie: Letters from Iwo Jima
Romaji:
Japanese: 硫黄島からの手紙
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Iris Yamashita, Paul Haggis
Producer:
Cinematography:
Release Date: December 9, 2006
Runtime: 141 min.
Language: English, Japanese
Country: USA

Cast

Ken Watanabe - General Kuribayashi
Kazunari Ninomiya - Saigo
Tsuyoshi Ihara - Baron Nishi
Ryo Kase - Shimizu
Shido Nakamura - Lieutenant Ito
Hiroshi Watanabe - Lieutenant Fujita
Takumi Bando - Captain Tanida
Yuki Matsuzaki - Nozaki
Takashi Yamaguchi - Kashiwara
Eijiro Ozaki - Lieutenant Okubo
Nae Yuki - Hanako
Nobumasa Sakagami - Admiral Ohsugi
Luke Eberl - Sam (as Lucas Elliot)
Sonny Saito - Medic Endo
Steve Santa Sekiyoshi - Kanda
Hiro Abe - Lt. Colonel Oiso
Toshiya Agata - Captain Iwasaki
Yoshi Ishii - Private Yamazaki
Toshi Toda - Colonel Adachi
Ken Kensei - Maj. General Hayashi
Ikuma Ando - Ozawa
Akiko Shima - Lead Woman
Masashi Nagadoi - Admiral Ichimaru

Trailer

Awards

"Best Foreign Film" - 2007 (20th) Nikkan Sports Film Awards - December, 2007
"Best Foreign Language Film" - 2008 (31st) Japan Academy Prize - February 15, 2008

Comments

Poze Sep 03 2014 1:26 pm While "Letters from Iwo Jima" is truly a great achievement is several ways, the script is powerful, the production is superb, all the technical departments almost perfected their jobs, there is some really good acting as well, and Eastwood's touch as a director is very visible, and its beautiful, it flaws almost flawlessly in this regard.

Well, what's wrong then? It simply lacks what makes it a really interesting movie. "Letters" starts with a present day scene of excavators digging up remains of the war in Iwo Jima, and finding letters in a cave that were written by Japanese soldiers and officers during the war on Iwo Jima island, it then travels back in time to WWII and story revolves around those whom their letters were found during the dawn of the American invasion on that island. Slowly, the movie loses its grip over its audience, becoming something closer to an audio book, and survival becomes a repetitive process!!!

Everyone seem to be praising the film for being told from the other side, and its true you don't see that many American film makers do that, and although the film didn't just speak Japanese, it lived and breathed Japanese, it couldn't escape the limited framework of Hollywood, this is very visible through the "good" characters, all the good, honest or lovable Japanese characters were either American sympathizers who lived in the US for a while and kept saying how a great nation the US is, or are Japanese people that do not care for the Imperial system and would not mind handing over the island to their rival Americans. On the other hand, all Japanese loyalists were mean American haters. Even the resolution of the strict Imperial soldiers was that the Americans were not as evil as they were told. But still, everyone was very fond of the fact that the movie was told completely from a Japanese point of view. However, just because Eastwood is an American film maker making a Japanese-point-of-view movie, doesn't make the film any better than what it really is, the film's ratings seem to be getting higher just because there is an American film maker behind it and I disagree, it is what it is regardless who the people behind it were.

The film was also highly praised as a companion film to "Flags", and while together they form a great duo, on its own, "Letters" does not achieve greatness.

Why did Eastwood and Spielberg decide to make "Letters from Iwo Jima" this calm instead of making an adrenaline-pumping film? My guess is that they did not care about the average audience and the commercial success as much as they did care for the story's integrity.

doramachi Nov 26 2013 9:23 pm This was a REALLY GREAT war film. I was surprised to even noticed that NinoKazu was in it.

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