Marcas’s Review Blog

Do you remember Full Metal Jacket? That was a film of two halves, but each as powerful in its own way in the hands of the master (imho).

Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers was a film of four fifths and a fifth that felt like one of two halves, if you mean what I see (it’s getting late and the mind is starting to drift).

There is the realistic and gritty (literally, what with the black sand) beach landing and trench warfare on Iwo Jima, interspersed with the flag raising heros’ tour back home. But any impact that this part might have had is dissipated as the film peters out in an overdose of fill-the-gaps and state-the-obvious voiceover, and a deathbed scene that suddenly expects you to empathise with the narrator, who up till then has been nothing but a cardboard cutout interviewer.

Ach, and now I realise why I hated the end so much... it has brought to Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, a truly turgid book, full of bland, baseless platitudes dressed up as deep philosophic insights.

At least it wasn’t John Wayne’s heavily jingoistic version, and it’s said that the ‘sequel’ from the Japanese point of view is better... wait and see.