Flags of Our Fathers
Written by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis
Directed by Clint Eastwood
DreamWorks/Paramount/Warner Bros.
2006
Rating:


Within its first 10 minutes, "Flags of Our Fathers" makes its ambitions known: flashing back-and-forth between time periods and narrative frames, "Flags" depicts the beginnings of battle on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, three soldiers raising a flag on a papier mβchι version of Mount Suribachi and a son of one of those soldiers conducting an investigation into the truth behind Joe Rosenthal's iconic picture "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima." "Flags" has no lesser ambition than to combine the sobering grisliness of "Saving Private Ryan," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance's" mythology deconstruction and the analytical approach of "Citizen Kane." In the process, director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Paul Haggis seek to explore the realities of war and heroism, the abuse of that heroism in the service of government-sponsored propaganda and the way soldiers are tossed aside by that government when they're no longer needed.

One can only imagine what a triumphant film "Flags" could've been if this bold undertaking had succeeded.

There's plenty of blame to go around but most of it has been placed squarely on the shoulders of Haggis (Vietnam veteran and "Jarhead" screenwriter William Broyles Jr. receives writing credit but Haggis reportedly tossed his draft). Beloved by many for his screenplay for "Million Dollar Baby" (a film that has already begun to tarnish with age a mere two years after its release), Haggis has since been tarred and feathered by most of the critical community for his abysmal Oscar-winning film "Crash." Most of "Flags'" most egregious faults can be traced from that film to here, especially in terms of the film's one-note characterizations and depiction of racism.

John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Native American Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) are the surviving men from Rosenthal's photo who are forced by the government to be props in a $14 billion bond drive. Bradley behaves blandly stoical and Gagnon insipidly relishes the spotlight while Hayes descends into drunken hysterics either out of despair for wrongly being treated as a hero or because, in Haggis' ridiculous shorthand for racism, he isn't allowed into a bar because he's an "Injun."

Given these severe problems it seems unlikely that a chronological approach to the material would have been much of a corrective, but the dislinear storytelling further undermines the film's themes. Attempts by the audience to become involved in the various plot lines are stymied by the insistent flashbacks. The shifting time frames are lazily signaled by overlapping sound edits, like a backfiring car turning into gunfire on Iwo Jima. The frame of the investigation by James Bradley (played in shadow by Tom McCarthy like "Citizen Kane's" faceless reporter Jerry Thompson), who in reality co-wrote the book that inspired "Flags," serves no structural purpose. The power of the invasion is especially diluted, with the interruptions negating propulsion and removing the battle's tension by already revealing who survives.

The war scenes' ineffectiveness is also attributable to Eastwood. The whole of "Flags" is directed with the bare minimum of competence. Eastwood's generally woodcut mise en scθne is here replaced with aesthetics that are as tedious as the script's persistent pounding of its themes. Those themes are worthy of a film, just not this one.

Posted Friday, January 5, 2007

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