Death is not a question of if, but rather when in Letters from Iwo Jima, part two of Clint Eastwood’s look at the historic battle of Iwo Jima.

Every soldier in Iwo Jima expects to die, yet they continue to dig caves and build bunkers. This fundamental shift from “fighting to survive” to “fighting to die” informs almost every scene in Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima follows a Japanese general and private, both missing families and rebelling against the illogical but honor-shrouded commands of the Japanese military. Throughout the movie we hear their intimate thoughts as they write letters home. This semi-epistolary style allows Eastwood to crack the military shell of his characters to see their emotions and show their previous lives through flashbacks.

Though it shares the same color palette and seasick camera style, Letters from Iwo Jima is an entirely different war movie from the American standard, Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg has a producing hand in both films, but there is very little action, like the storming of Omaha Beach, in Iwo Jima. Everything is small, close and terrible.

Iwo Jima is instead reminiscent of the 2004 German film The Downfall, which depicts Hitler’s final days holed up in his Berlin bunker. Both depict the illogical downfall of a proud empire. Executions, forced and willing suicide, and hopeless last stands populate both films.

Eastwood captures the diehard patriotic culture of World War II Japan and creates shocking emotion in small-scale violence, but the film doesn’t go much beyond that.

Don’t expect a movie with the shock and awe of a war film. Instead it is more of a violent cultural drama set against a war backdrop. One battle from two sides is an interesting concept, but Iwo Jima isn’t the war movie, or the emotional war drama, you wish it were.

-Andre Francisco

Grade: B-