Review: 'Flags Of Our Fathers' Poignant War Epic

'Flags Of Our Fathers' (R)(out of four)

Like the finest of wines, Clint Eastwood is getting better with age, becoming richer in complexity, intensity and flavor as the years tick by.

Peruse a list of his most recent titles, and you will see some of the best works of the last 20 years - films which started in familiar places but then drifted into unprecedented territory.

Back in 1992, "Unforgiven" was the anti-Western that abhorred violence. In 2003, "Mystic River" confronted the pains of molestation by refusing to confront them, turning instead the silence of a group of friends into the real horror.

2004's "Million Dollar Baby" is a boxing movie that spends its last third in a hospital; heck, even 2000's "Space Cowboys" was a comedy about senior citizens (not exactly a popular formula).

And with the poignant, beautiful and devastating "Flags of our Fathers," Eastwood seems to have brilliance to spare. With confidence and gusto, he gives us a battle sequence to rival anything in "Saving Private Ryan," a political commentary more searing than a Michael Moore diatribe, a tribute to a war and a time that is at once critical, patriotic and reverential.

It is an epic accomplishment -- a seemingly effortless marathon of characters, locales and messages the 76-year-old Eastwood breezes through with the headstrong speed of a teenage sprinter.

"Flags'" title refers to the story's single flag - or rather, its two flags -- and implies that message here could be applied to all flags in all wars. It opens with a similarly timeless allusion to "Citizen Kane," as an interviewer questions World War II veterans about their Iwo Jima memories.

It was there, in the Pacific Ocean, where some 30,000 American troops collided with 20,000 Japanese in February of 1945, trying to win this essential battle against the Japanese -- a deadly battle that would continue for weeks. When the American forces finally took the high ground, they planted a flag. When it was heard that an elite officer want ed to steal credit for the victory, a commander on scene told his men to quickly bring the real flag back down, and put up a ceremonial second stars and stripes.

It was this second flag raising that was photographed by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, that was seen by military commanders as the perfect metaphor for America's military campaign, that was printed in nearly every major American newspaper.

An overnight sensation, the U.S. government rushed to identify the faceless men in the photo and suddenly a handful of troops, including Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillipe), Rene (Jesse Bradford) and Ira (Adam Beach), find themselves welcomed home as both heroes of the American public and salesmen for the American military. Buy war bonds, they say over and over - the real heroes are not us, but those still on the battlefield.

And those who died.

Back and forth Eastwood slides in time. In the present, we see that interviewer trying to connect with a father who never talked about war. In the past, we see the anxiety on the faces of soldiers preparing to land on Iwo Jima, the slaughter which erupted on the beaches of that black, barren island and the guilt felt by the soldiers welcomed home as heroes.

We hoisted "the second flag," one says, but no one seems to care, and Eastwood uses their pain to show the disconnect between the nation's cheering crowds, the press' flashing cameras and the true horrors unfolding halfway around the world. Concepts like heroism, patriotism and nobility, "Flags" says, are inventions of politicians -- terms often created by those who are not particularly noble or heroic.

Anti-war without being anti-soldier, Eastwood has created a document that shows more convincingly than ever before the way war poisons the soul, scars the psyche and seemingly strips the world of its very colors (the film is bathed in a monochromatic, earth-colored tint).

The battles here seem grander and deadlier than we're used to, the hearts seem more fragile and devastated, the message seems more timely and irrefutable; Eastwood has not just made an indelible mark in the genre, but taught the rest of us a thing or two about what the genre has always been lacking.