![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/flasgsfathers.jpg\" "\\"flasgsfathers\\"")
Joe Rosenthal's immortal photo of the second Iwo Jima flag raising in 1945<\/p><\/div>\n
Almost Desecration<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n[xrr rating=3\/5]<\/p>\n
Flags of Our Fathers<\/em>. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Paul Walker, Robert Patrick, Neal McDonough, Melanie Lynskey. Screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., and Paul Haggis. Based on the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers. Directed by Clint Eastwood. (Warner Bros., DreamWorks Pictures, 2006, color, 132 minutes. MPAA rating: R<\/strong><\/p>\nClint Eastwood is arguably our greatest living motion picture director. Thirty-five years after his directorial debut in the Hitchcock homage\u00a0Play Misty for Me\u00a0<\/em>(1971), the silent, gritty actor who learned his filmmaking craft at the feet of such masters as Sergio Leone and Don Siegel has produced a body of work sweeping in variety of subject matter, yet singular in its artistic vision. While many of his contemporaries have slipped in critical esteem\u2014most notably Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese\u2014the two-time Oscar-winning director of\u00a0Million Dollar Baby\u00a0<\/em>(2004) and\u00a0Unforgiven\u00a0<\/em>(1992) has only improved with age.<\/p>\nUntil now. In his latest cinematic offering, Eastwood misses the mark with this loose, relentlessly dark, and ultimately cynical adaptation of James Bradley\u2019s book of the same name.<\/p>\n
The book was a tribute to the six Marines (one of them his father, John \u201cDoc\u201d Bradley) who raised Old Glory atop Mount Suribachi on the Japanese volcanic island of Iwo Jima, on February 23, 1945. Bradley\u2019s work chronicles the life stories of these six\u2014three who survived the carnage that claimed almost 7,000 American lives: John Bradley, Ira Hayes, and Rene Gagnon; plus the three who perished: Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Mike Strank. Of the survivors, none considered himself heroic for raising the flag or even for his deeds in combat. John Bradley shunned talk about the war, and it was only after his passing that son James found a shoebox in the family\u2019s attic containing mementos, most notably a Navy Cross. \u201cDoc\u201d Bradley, a corpsman (Navy lingo for \u201cmedic\u201d), had resuscitated a wounded Marine during a fierce firefight while his own body was ripped by Japanese shrapnel. Yet it was not for bravery that Bradley and his comrades were immortalized after the war, but rather for their chance appearance in Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal\u2019s iconic image\u2014perhaps the most recognizable photograph in history, taken on the fifth day of the bloodiest battle of World War II.<\/p>\n
Their individual achievements, identity, and dignity eventually became subsumed in the aura of the legend created by \u201cThe Photo.\u201d Through their stories, Bradley\u2019s exhaustively researched book gently prods the reader to consider the true nature of heroism. He pens a moving historical account, shedding light on the real lives of six\u00a0individuals<\/em>\u00a0who rose to greatness despite their flaws and despite history\u2019s tendency to transform them into anonymous symbols of heroic virtue.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a powerful message which, sadly, gets mangled in Eastwood\u2019s overreaching screen adaptation. Although many of the elements of Bradley\u2019s account make it onscreen, in Eastwood\u2019s hands\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers\u00a0<\/em>becomes a documelo<\/em>drama\u2014a ghastly tragedy that subverts the humanity of Bradley\u2019s account, becoming an overwrought portrait of the three surviving flag-raisers as victims.<\/p>\nTo be sure, an interesting portrait it is\u2014a story that promises to grab you by the heart and never let go. After Rosenthal\u2019s photo blazes across the front pages of America\u2019s newspapers, Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes are whisked up by a cynical public relations machine to shill war bonds to a war-weary America. Though taking up only sixteen of the book\u2019s 382 pages, the war bond drive comprises the bulk of the film\u2019s plot and onscreen action.<\/p>\n
The book treats the \u201cMighty 7th<\/sup>\u201d War Loan bond drive ambivalently, though mostly positively. The drive raised over $26.3 billion from American individuals, families, and businesses\u2014almost half of the 1946 fiscal year federal budget of $56 billion\u2014thus making it possible to rearm the military to force Japan\u2019s defeat in the war\u2019s final months. \u201cWhen I spoke with a Treasury Department source by telephone to confirm these figures,\u201d Bradley writes, \u201cthe official marveled over the size and accomplishments of the Mighty 7th<\/sup>. He fell silent for a moment as he shuffled some papers on his desk. Then he said, simply: \u2018We were one then.\u2019\u201d Indeed, without victory at Iwo Jima and the funds raised by the bond drive, the\u00a0second\u00a0<\/em>most recognizable WWII photo\u2014Alfred Eisenstaedt\u2019s August 15, 1945 shot of a returning sailor planting a big, juicy kiss on a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day\u2014might never have been taken.<\/p>\nBut Eastwood fixates on the bond drive, taking its highs and lows to distill a potent concoction of pure misery. His account depicts the men\u2019s whirlwind, whistle-stop tour of America\u2019s metropolises as a slick, gaudy sideshow run by contemptuous PR men. It\u2019s a chronicle of exploiting the flag-raisers by having them climb atop a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 Mount Suribachi to raise the red, white, and blue\u2014of tastelessly serving ice cream molded in the shape of the raising\u2014of glad-handing businessmen and politicians who seek to use the men for their own profit.<\/p>\n
Marine Private Ira Hayes becomes the movie\u2019s conscience during all the ballyhoo. \u201cI think this whole goddamn thing is a farce, if you ask me,\u201d he mutters. Yet the book version gives little such evidence of Hayes\u2019s revulsion. In one scene from the book, a politician introduces Hayes (a Pima American Indian) as \u201cthe only man here who can claim to be a real American.\u201d In the film version, actor Adam Beach reacts mostly silently and stoically. Perhaps Eastwood felt that Hayes\u2019s reaction in real life, in which he strode up to the microphone and exclaimed, \u201cI\u2019m an Indian and I\u2019m damn proud of it,\u201d would have undermined his effort to portray Hayes as a hapless victim of constant racial slurs.<\/p>\n
The look and feel of the movie also serve to evince Eastwood\u2019s dark artistic agenda. A pall of foreboding darkness permeates not only the grueling battle scenes but even the movie\u2019s happier moments (e.g., coming back home to family, or Bradley marrying his childhood sweetheart), rendering them at best bittersweet. Director of photography Tom Stern filmed\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers\u00a0<\/em>almost monochromatically, in swathes of rich cobalt blue, muting the other hues of the spectrum in the color timing.<\/p>\nThe movie\u2019s chief flaw is in its confused narrative structure, told mostly by overusing flashbacks. Eastwood and editor Joel Cox used flashback montages to great effect in 1995\u2019s\u00a0The Bridges of Madison County,<\/em>\u00a0but they don\u2019t quite pull it off here. As a viewer, I felt like a ping-pong ball paddled between the bond rallies and the battle scenes; by the middle of the film, I could already anticipate that a newspaper photographer\u2019s blinding flashbulb at a stadium appearance would cut right to a nighttime flare or exploding ordnance as one of the three soldiers relived the hell of war.<\/p>\nAlthough Eastwood captures the gory reality of the battle scenes, he never offers the viewer the reason for capturing Iwo Jima, or details of the genuinely heroic exploits of the twenty-two Marines and five sailors who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (the most given in any single battle in the history of American warfare). Furthermore, even after more than two hours, the viewer never really gets to know as individuals Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) or Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), not to mention the three flag-raisers who died.<\/p>\n
The only thing that resonated with me at all was Adam Beach\u2019s moving performance as Ira Hayes. It\u2019s a tragic story of alcoholic despair and guilt that so many fellow Marines died while he was spared, ending with his loss of dignity and untimely death. Yet Hayes\u2019s story is poignant only as a vignette within an otherwise two-dimensional film and deserved fuller development, along the lines of Eastwood\u2019s biopic of saxophonist Charlie Parker,\u00a0Bird<\/em>\u00a0(1988).<\/p>\nJames Bradley closes his book by conveying great respect for his father\u2019s modest request to posterity:<\/p>\n
After spending five years researching their lives, the boys certainly seem like heroes to me. I admit it.But I must defer to my father\u2026. I will take my dad\u2019s word for it: Mike, Harlon, Franklin, Ira, Rene, and Doc, the men of Easy Company\u2014they just did what anybody would have done, and they were not heroes<\/p>\n
Not heroes.<\/p>\n
They were boys of common virtue. Called to duty. Brothers and sons. Friends and neighbors. And fathers. It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Anyone who had a friend or loved one who fought in World War II recognizes this modesty as a hallmark of that generation. My adopted godfather, Nick, a crusty old Marine who served in Guadalcanal, told me a thousand war stories, most of which involved goofing off with dames and alcohol, hitching rides back home on furlough, reminiscing about buddies who never made it back, playing practical jokes on each other. He never spoke about combat, though.<\/p>\n
Nick was a real-life hero to me. I have no idea what he did to earn a chestful of ribbons, and I never asked him, because I figured that if he ever wanted me to know, he\u2019d tell me. But he never did. And it never really mattered, because I learned from him that real heroes don\u2019t blow their own horn.<\/p>\n
Eastwood\u2019s version of their story is ultimately a deconstruction of their heroism. He basically writes off the heroic with a relativistic clich\u00e9\u2014\u201cEveryone likes things nice and simple\u2014good and evil, heroes and villains\u201d\u2014and ends with a bitter lament: \u201cMaybe there is no such thing as heroes.\u201d Even Sergeant Sefton, Billy Wilder\u2019s cynic extraordinaire in the 1953 film\u00a0Stalag 17<\/em>, could become the hero with a heart of gold; but in\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers,\u00a0<\/em>Eastwood performs a sort of reverse alchemy, chucking out gold nuggets while panning for mud.<\/p>\nIf Eastwood\u2019s aspirations were merely artistic, I\u2019d regard\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers<\/em>as a flawed classic. But it\u2019s worse than that, because he has an agenda. He subverts the truth of these individuals\u2019 stories to craft a political message of exploitation. In doing so, Eastwood transforms Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes into a\u00a0sotto voce<\/em>\u00a0symbolic rebuke for the \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d banner aboard the\u00a0U.S.S. Lincoln<\/em>\u00a0aircraft carrier in 2003, when former Texas Air National Guard fighter pilot and current president George W. Bush co-piloted a Navy SB-3 Viking to mark victory in the Iraq war. Sure, I thought Bush was undignified in doing that, because although he had never served in combat a day in his life, he cast himself as some kind of returning war hero. The credit for that victory rightfully should have gone to those brave warriors who\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0stood in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\nThat said, I found it highly ironic that despite Eastwood\u2019s strident crowing against the (mostly imaginary) exploitation of Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes, he himself, having an ideological axe to grind, would exploit and trivialize these heroes over sixty years later.<\/p>\n
Unlike in\u00a0Unforgiven,<\/em>\u00a0there is neither riveting drama nor stellar acting (with the exception of Beach) evident in\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers<\/em>\u00a0to allow it to withstand the test of time. By belittling the heroism of its subjects, this flick will more than likely be regarded as one of Clint Eastwood\u2019s minor works, alongside movies like\u00a0Blood Work\u00a0<\/em>(2002) and\u00a0True Crime\u00a0<\/em>(1999).<\/p>\nRobert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Almost Desecration [xrr rating=3\/5] Flags of Our Fathers. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Paul Walker, Robert Patrick, Neal McDonough, Melanie Lynskey. Screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., and Paul Haggis. Based on the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers. Directed by Clint Eastwood. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,35,3,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-docudramas","category-dramas","category-mreview","category-war-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Clint Eastwood is arguably our greatest living motion picture director. Thirty-five years after his directorial debut in the Hitchcock homage\u00a0Play Misty for Me\u00a0<\/em>(1971), the silent, gritty actor who learned his filmmaking craft at the feet of such masters as Sergio Leone and Don Siegel has produced a body of work sweeping in variety of subject matter, yet singular in its artistic vision. While many of his contemporaries have slipped in critical esteem\u2014most notably Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese\u2014the two-time Oscar-winning director of\u00a0Million Dollar Baby\u00a0<\/em>(2004) and\u00a0Unforgiven\u00a0<\/em>(1992) has only improved with age.<\/p>\n Until now. In his latest cinematic offering, Eastwood misses the mark with this loose, relentlessly dark, and ultimately cynical adaptation of James Bradley\u2019s book of the same name.<\/p>\n The book was a tribute to the six Marines (one of them his father, John \u201cDoc\u201d Bradley) who raised Old Glory atop Mount Suribachi on the Japanese volcanic island of Iwo Jima, on February 23, 1945. Bradley\u2019s work chronicles the life stories of these six\u2014three who survived the carnage that claimed almost 7,000 American lives: John Bradley, Ira Hayes, and Rene Gagnon; plus the three who perished: Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Mike Strank. Of the survivors, none considered himself heroic for raising the flag or even for his deeds in combat. John Bradley shunned talk about the war, and it was only after his passing that son James found a shoebox in the family\u2019s attic containing mementos, most notably a Navy Cross. \u201cDoc\u201d Bradley, a corpsman (Navy lingo for \u201cmedic\u201d), had resuscitated a wounded Marine during a fierce firefight while his own body was ripped by Japanese shrapnel. Yet it was not for bravery that Bradley and his comrades were immortalized after the war, but rather for their chance appearance in Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal\u2019s iconic image\u2014perhaps the most recognizable photograph in history, taken on the fifth day of the bloodiest battle of World War II.<\/p>\n Their individual achievements, identity, and dignity eventually became subsumed in the aura of the legend created by \u201cThe Photo.\u201d Through their stories, Bradley\u2019s exhaustively researched book gently prods the reader to consider the true nature of heroism. He pens a moving historical account, shedding light on the real lives of six\u00a0individuals<\/em>\u00a0who rose to greatness despite their flaws and despite history\u2019s tendency to transform them into anonymous symbols of heroic virtue.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a powerful message which, sadly, gets mangled in Eastwood\u2019s overreaching screen adaptation. Although many of the elements of Bradley\u2019s account make it onscreen, in Eastwood\u2019s hands\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers\u00a0<\/em>becomes a documelo<\/em>drama\u2014a ghastly tragedy that subverts the humanity of Bradley\u2019s account, becoming an overwrought portrait of the three surviving flag-raisers as victims.<\/p>\n To be sure, an interesting portrait it is\u2014a story that promises to grab you by the heart and never let go. After Rosenthal\u2019s photo blazes across the front pages of America\u2019s newspapers, Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes are whisked up by a cynical public relations machine to shill war bonds to a war-weary America. Though taking up only sixteen of the book\u2019s 382 pages, the war bond drive comprises the bulk of the film\u2019s plot and onscreen action.<\/p>\n The book treats the \u201cMighty 7th<\/sup>\u201d War Loan bond drive ambivalently, though mostly positively. The drive raised over $26.3 billion from American individuals, families, and businesses\u2014almost half of the 1946 fiscal year federal budget of $56 billion\u2014thus making it possible to rearm the military to force Japan\u2019s defeat in the war\u2019s final months. \u201cWhen I spoke with a Treasury Department source by telephone to confirm these figures,\u201d Bradley writes, \u201cthe official marveled over the size and accomplishments of the Mighty 7th<\/sup>. He fell silent for a moment as he shuffled some papers on his desk. Then he said, simply: \u2018We were one then.\u2019\u201d Indeed, without victory at Iwo Jima and the funds raised by the bond drive, the\u00a0second\u00a0<\/em>most recognizable WWII photo\u2014Alfred Eisenstaedt\u2019s August 15, 1945 shot of a returning sailor planting a big, juicy kiss on a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day\u2014might never have been taken.<\/p>\n But Eastwood fixates on the bond drive, taking its highs and lows to distill a potent concoction of pure misery. His account depicts the men\u2019s whirlwind, whistle-stop tour of America\u2019s metropolises as a slick, gaudy sideshow run by contemptuous PR men. It\u2019s a chronicle of exploiting the flag-raisers by having them climb atop a papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 Mount Suribachi to raise the red, white, and blue\u2014of tastelessly serving ice cream molded in the shape of the raising\u2014of glad-handing businessmen and politicians who seek to use the men for their own profit.<\/p>\n Marine Private Ira Hayes becomes the movie\u2019s conscience during all the ballyhoo. \u201cI think this whole goddamn thing is a farce, if you ask me,\u201d he mutters. Yet the book version gives little such evidence of Hayes\u2019s revulsion. In one scene from the book, a politician introduces Hayes (a Pima American Indian) as \u201cthe only man here who can claim to be a real American.\u201d In the film version, actor Adam Beach reacts mostly silently and stoically. Perhaps Eastwood felt that Hayes\u2019s reaction in real life, in which he strode up to the microphone and exclaimed, \u201cI\u2019m an Indian and I\u2019m damn proud of it,\u201d would have undermined his effort to portray Hayes as a hapless victim of constant racial slurs.<\/p>\n The look and feel of the movie also serve to evince Eastwood\u2019s dark artistic agenda. A pall of foreboding darkness permeates not only the grueling battle scenes but even the movie\u2019s happier moments (e.g., coming back home to family, or Bradley marrying his childhood sweetheart), rendering them at best bittersweet. Director of photography Tom Stern filmed\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers\u00a0<\/em>almost monochromatically, in swathes of rich cobalt blue, muting the other hues of the spectrum in the color timing.<\/p>\n The movie\u2019s chief flaw is in its confused narrative structure, told mostly by overusing flashbacks. Eastwood and editor Joel Cox used flashback montages to great effect in 1995\u2019s\u00a0The Bridges of Madison County,<\/em>\u00a0but they don\u2019t quite pull it off here. As a viewer, I felt like a ping-pong ball paddled between the bond rallies and the battle scenes; by the middle of the film, I could already anticipate that a newspaper photographer\u2019s blinding flashbulb at a stadium appearance would cut right to a nighttime flare or exploding ordnance as one of the three soldiers relived the hell of war.<\/p>\n Although Eastwood captures the gory reality of the battle scenes, he never offers the viewer the reason for capturing Iwo Jima, or details of the genuinely heroic exploits of the twenty-two Marines and five sailors who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (the most given in any single battle in the history of American warfare). Furthermore, even after more than two hours, the viewer never really gets to know as individuals Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) or Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), not to mention the three flag-raisers who died.<\/p>\n The only thing that resonated with me at all was Adam Beach\u2019s moving performance as Ira Hayes. It\u2019s a tragic story of alcoholic despair and guilt that so many fellow Marines died while he was spared, ending with his loss of dignity and untimely death. Yet Hayes\u2019s story is poignant only as a vignette within an otherwise two-dimensional film and deserved fuller development, along the lines of Eastwood\u2019s biopic of saxophonist Charlie Parker,\u00a0Bird<\/em>\u00a0(1988).<\/p>\n James Bradley closes his book by conveying great respect for his father\u2019s modest request to posterity:<\/p>\n After spending five years researching their lives, the boys certainly seem like heroes to me. I admit it.But I must defer to my father\u2026. I will take my dad\u2019s word for it: Mike, Harlon, Franklin, Ira, Rene, and Doc, the men of Easy Company\u2014they just did what anybody would have done, and they were not heroes<\/p>\n Not heroes.<\/p>\n They were boys of common virtue. Called to duty. Brothers and sons. Friends and neighbors. And fathers. It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anyone who had a friend or loved one who fought in World War II recognizes this modesty as a hallmark of that generation. My adopted godfather, Nick, a crusty old Marine who served in Guadalcanal, told me a thousand war stories, most of which involved goofing off with dames and alcohol, hitching rides back home on furlough, reminiscing about buddies who never made it back, playing practical jokes on each other. He never spoke about combat, though.<\/p>\n Nick was a real-life hero to me. I have no idea what he did to earn a chestful of ribbons, and I never asked him, because I figured that if he ever wanted me to know, he\u2019d tell me. But he never did. And it never really mattered, because I learned from him that real heroes don\u2019t blow their own horn.<\/p>\n Eastwood\u2019s version of their story is ultimately a deconstruction of their heroism. He basically writes off the heroic with a relativistic clich\u00e9\u2014\u201cEveryone likes things nice and simple\u2014good and evil, heroes and villains\u201d\u2014and ends with a bitter lament: \u201cMaybe there is no such thing as heroes.\u201d Even Sergeant Sefton, Billy Wilder\u2019s cynic extraordinaire in the 1953 film\u00a0Stalag 17<\/em>, could become the hero with a heart of gold; but in\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers,\u00a0<\/em>Eastwood performs a sort of reverse alchemy, chucking out gold nuggets while panning for mud.<\/p>\n If Eastwood\u2019s aspirations were merely artistic, I\u2019d regard\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers<\/em>as a flawed classic. But it\u2019s worse than that, because he has an agenda. He subverts the truth of these individuals\u2019 stories to craft a political message of exploitation. In doing so, Eastwood transforms Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes into a\u00a0sotto voce<\/em>\u00a0symbolic rebuke for the \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d banner aboard the\u00a0U.S.S. Lincoln<\/em>\u00a0aircraft carrier in 2003, when former Texas Air National Guard fighter pilot and current president George W. Bush co-piloted a Navy SB-3 Viking to mark victory in the Iraq war. Sure, I thought Bush was undignified in doing that, because although he had never served in combat a day in his life, he cast himself as some kind of returning war hero. The credit for that victory rightfully should have gone to those brave warriors who\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0stood in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n That said, I found it highly ironic that despite Eastwood\u2019s strident crowing against the (mostly imaginary) exploitation of Bradley, Gagnon, and Hayes, he himself, having an ideological axe to grind, would exploit and trivialize these heroes over sixty years later.<\/p>\n Unlike in\u00a0Unforgiven,<\/em>\u00a0there is neither riveting drama nor stellar acting (with the exception of Beach) evident in\u00a0Flags of Our Fathers<\/em>\u00a0to allow it to withstand the test of time. By belittling the heroism of its subjects, this flick will more than likely be regarded as one of Clint Eastwood\u2019s minor works, alongside movies like\u00a0Blood Work\u00a0<\/em>(2002) and\u00a0True Crime\u00a0<\/em>(1999).<\/p>\n Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Almost Desecration [xrr rating=3\/5] Flags of Our Fathers. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Paul Walker, Robert Patrick, Neal McDonough, Melanie Lynskey. Screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., and Paul Haggis. Based on the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 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