Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara
Director: Clint Eastwood
Category: IIB (Japanese)
In Letters from Iwo Jima, the companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, US actor-director Clint Eastwood looks at a major second world war battle from the perspective of the outnumbered Japanese soldiers, who are ordered to die for their country.
This is a bold move because few war movies are willing to give a human face to the enemy and portray them as anything more than shooting targets. But is this daring and novel point of view sufficient to make the film a success?
Despite all the Oscar buzz around the movie, Letters from Iwo Jima fails to live up to its billing.
It revolves around two key characters, Japanese commander General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), whose letters to his wife and children - recently unearthed on the island - provide the raw material for Iris Yamashita's script, and Japanese soldier Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a young baker who is conscripted into the army.