Letters From Iwo Jima

**** Stars

The Oscar race has a serious contender with Letters from Iwo Jima, the final film of Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima saga. This is an extraordinary vision of war, with Eastwood's strongest directorial film of his career.

From first time screenwriter Iris Yamashita, Eastwood's digs deep into Japanese culture, starting with Lt. Gen. Tadamichi (the absolutely magnificent Ken Watanabe), who once was an envoy to the U.S., is now the commander of the troops on Iwo Jima, struggling to survive a tough enemy on the lonely island of Japan. Through the eyes of Tadamichi and a few other Japanese soldiers, Letters shows there is more to war than the battle itself.

Letters from Iwo Jima is on the level of Saving Private Ryan as one of the greatest war films to ever hit the screen. It is stronger than Flags of our Fathers and shot with a poetic sense of battle and of bruised beauty. Clint Eastwood is a master storyteller, telling us that war is a confused sense of mind. At the time American's were raised to believe that Japan was a corrupt nation. The Japanese were raised to believe that the United States was made up of cowards. But in reality, both sides are the same person, both sides want the same thing, and no one is able to speak it. This is a masterpiece, adding further proof that Eastwood, almost in his eighties, is a man of unspeakable knowledge and soulful power.