Flags of Our Fathers: A Cinematic Hate Crime

This film made me want to urinate on Steven Spielberg.

Disclaimer: I'm not referring to the book. Indeed, the trials and travails of those who went on the War Bond tour may have been just as depicted in the film, but I doubt it. No one has such poor taste, and time, as to carve a desert in the form of six soldiers putting up a flag, and then pouring strawberry sauce on it. It is the most blunt, despicable sort of symbolism imaginable, which leads us to:

THE 5 CARDINAL SINS OF PRETENSION
1) Preachy. Oh my. I guess Spielberg had already covered this ground in 2-3 movies, the ground that no one fights for an idea, that no fights are noble, that all soldiers are noble just for being there but they are only in it for each other. And there are no heroes. So he handed this one to Eastwood. And instead of telling a story about soldiers fighting a great battle, we have a seemingly interminable lecture on the marketing of the war. The movie begins with a lecture, almost every line is a lecture, every moment is a lecture, with every ludicrous twist of fate to match a lecture line, the movie moves from pedantry to pedantry with almost no humor, no character development, heck, it takes a good 2 hours just to get a handle on whose name is whose because the movie does such a bad job of getting you to know the characters before killing them off or having them do important plot points for reasons that aren't truly discernible. Oh, and just to fill the cup of pedantry to overflowing, they poured in almost endless racism against Native Americans, besmirched the memory of President Truman, reduced the Japanese to comically faceless villains, and added some good old-fashioned ugly American tourism, just to make sure it was clear that everything is wrong w/ American life. Simply put, the preachiest movie I've ever seen. I hated being a Californian and seeing all of this hatred spewed into film, especially a film that, for about 1/4, has at least the hints of a good film about the Marine Corps and its most treasured battle.

2) Political. I know it's tough to separate out the two. So just to make sure, the film begins and ends w/ ludicrous Olympics-Lifetime background story lighting and makes sure you get the point, especially in the opening lecture, that it's important that a blanket statement about a current war be made in a movie about Iwo Jima.

3) Psychosexual. Luckily we weren't forced to suffer the sex is art phenomenon. Apparently there weren't a lot of babes on Iwo Jima. In fact, the brief character building scene (that's right, there's only one for all the faceless heroes the movie supposedly honors) has a cute sex joke that seems completely out of place in an otherwise wooden film.

4) Too Long. Nellly WAYYYYY TOOO LOOONNNGGGGG. We endure repeated repetitive emphasis of pedantic points repeatedly repeated through tedious way too long sections on the war bond campaign. Did I mention the repetition? Good. Because the whole time you're just sitting there thinking "COULD I WATCH THE F-ING BATTLE!!!???" You know, like the part where they won the freaking thing? The part where the other guys stopped shooting and the beachhead was secured? That part didn't warrant...6 seconds? Ryan Phillipe got at least an hour of standing awkwardly still while words came out of his mouth in mostly literate format. The winning the battle part isn't worth 1/100th of Ryan Phillipe? Or a little more testimony to Japanese courage? That wasn't worth Phillipe reiterating his concerns for the 5th time? Honestly, Ryan Freaking Phillipe??? Why not just suit up Laura Flyn Boyle and Elijah Wood and see how they look as Marines and Navy Corpsmen.

5) Whiny Hero. I guess to make up for the lack of psychosexual nonsense they went so overboard with the whining that Fran Drescher would blush. Every single character in the movie, supposedly stoic soldiers who refused to talk about their experiences, spends much of the film crying and blubbering and voicing their self-doubt to any who will listen. Do people in Hollywood ever think anything they don't say? Are they so surprised by the existence of real emotions that they have to talk about them? Or are they so unaccustomed to the phenomenon, and incapable of, you know, pretending, that they just blurt them out instead? The answer? Ryan Phillipe. I swear, at least 3 times in the movie he smirked to himself like, "What the hell am I doing pretending to be a Marine for Clint Eastwood? It's just preposterous!" Why even have a casting department?

As if that weren't enough, they put the book/script author in the movie!!!! This has to be Cardinal Sin #6 (Cardinal Sin 5.5 being the use of an Arab choral voice and violin to convey exoticism and gravitas). Do not put yourself in the movie. We'll call this the Tarantino Rule. I don't care about your freaking catharsis and your relationship with your father. I don't want to be reminded that you decided to turn that catharsis into cash in book format. I don't want to see you or know you. I came for a movie about Iwo Jima, not you. Your life is not interesting. You are a writer and a chump. Go away.

Just a note - yes, dipstick, there are real heroes. They win Medals of Honor. Audie Murphy and Alvin York were not made up for our sake. They rocked on the battlefield. I'm sorry that you don't want to distinguish between great soldiers, good soldiers and not-so-good soldiers. Yes everyone who didn't run away gets credit. But, dude, the guy everyone says was the best marine of the bunch gets no airtime until they're like, "Oh yeah, that dude rocked. Let's show him getting killed."

You want to make a good movie about Iwo Jima. MAKE IT ABOUT IWO JIMA!!!! How hard is that? Don't make it about Iraq, or about commercialism, or about your emotional catharsis about not knowing your father, or about all your petty Hollywood self-absorption. Make it about the freaking battle idiot. That whole, "Oh, and about the flag, funny story..." is the kicker to the soldier's story of the battle. It's not the story. The movie never felt like it was about the 40's, that it had people from the 40's in it. It looked like a bunch of Gen-Y punks feeling decidedly awkward trying to pretend to be the dudes on Iwo Jima. It felt like they took some extra footage from Jarhead and put it in this movie. Apparently hardly anyone looks like a soldier in Hollywood.

This was as dumb as making a movie about Alexander the Great that focuses on the fact that he, like a lot of Greek dudes at the time, was bi. Not the whole, conquer the world, strangely whiny, but immensely talented, wreckless ambition thing. No, it was the sex life that was important. Nobody would be dumb enough to do that, right?

Thanks to this repeated catastrophic stupidity, as it consistently leaches money from solid film ideas, let's just sum up the advise to avoid the cardinal sins of stupidity: 1) tell the story as it happened, not as it applies to your petty current events agenda. 2) Don't put yourself in the movie. don't put writers in the movie. 3) Don't use blunt symbolism to pretend you're an artist. 4) FREAKING A, FIRST RULE OF FILM SCHOOL: SHOW ME DON'T TELL ME.

I swear Spielberg, quite dodging me. I will pee on you the next time I see you.