Letters From Iwo Jima

Director Clint Eastwood and writers Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis take us through the same bloody World War II battle that figured in Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers last year—this time from the viewpoint of the island’s Japanese defenders, most of them doomed. The two films crown Eastwood’s already distinguished career, but each can stand alone. This one especially is quite a feat of artistic imagination; it feels more like a Japanese movie (subtitled, with only a few brief scenes spoken in English) than an American one. Central characters are the island commander (Ken Watanabe) and a lowly draftee (Kazunari Ninomiya), whose fates are poignantly intertwined. Cinematographer Tom Stern gives the film a drained, monochrome look that underscores the bleak hopelessness of the men whose story it tells.