I was curiously unmoved by Letters from Iwo Jima.
I went in fully expecting–wanting, really–to be awed by the power of Clint Eastwood’s vision. The conceit is certainly ingenious: turn a legendary American victory on its head by showing it exclusively from the perspective of the losers.
But he makes a wrong move right from the start. Rather than immediately jumping into the wartime action on Iwo Jima, he pans across the remaining detritus of the battle in 2007. A team of Japanese archaeologists, in white jumpsuits, with high-powered flashlights, makes their way into a bunker–a fancy word for a cave really, since neither the floors, walls nor ceilings end in smooth right angles–to search for artifacts. They come upon a cloth sack buried in the dirt. Before they open the bag, the screen fades out, and the action moves to Iwo Jima’s south-facing beach in early 1945.
Posted by myownworstcritic 
