Tag Archives: Letters from Iwo Jima

Tedious. That’s the best way I can think to describe it. Over two hours and I looked at my watch often.

The essential flaw here is that Clint Eastwood‘s not saying anything we haven’t really heard before. The message seems to be “war is bad.” Did nobody know this? I suppose there’s a finer point having something to do with the archaic nature of certain cultures, and that change is important and sometimes it can take extreme duress for people to realize that. But again, is there anybody in America who thinks that self-sacrifice in the name of honor is a tradition worth being upheld? I doubt it. So, in the same way that Crash was about twenty years late in its message, so is Iwo Jima about fifty years too late. Continue reading →