A Pair of Marines and a Navy Corpsman
Flags of Our Fathers has so many characters that when I first saw it in a theater, I couldn't always keep track. However, the movie's focus is on the three surviving flag-raisers:
Navy Corpsman John "Doc" Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) — Even-tempered and level-headed, he renders medical aid to the wounded on the battlefield. Although not particularly happy about being on the bond tour, he performs his duty on it effectively.
Marine Private First Class Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) — Due to concern by his superiors about his suitability for combat, he is used only as a runner during battle. He relishes the attention he receives on the bond tour and tries to use it as a springboard to a good civilian job.
Marine Private First Class Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) — A Pima Indian from the reservation, he gets through the battle with no physical injuries while the Marines he admires most are killed around him. He would prefer to have nothing to do with the bond tour and sometimes shows up for events drunk.
Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
The screenplay, credited to ex-Marine William Broyles Jr. (Jarhead) and Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash), is nonformulaic. A few scenes are heavy-handed, but overall the screenwriters created a story that is powerful and emotionally involving. They captured the humanity of the three principal characters, but at the same time made them representative of the World War II generation. Yet, the story has resonance for viewers decades later.
It probably hurt Flags of Our Fathers at the box office that the cast had no superstars. But the acting is solid all around. Especially noteworthy are the understated performance of Ryan Phillippe as the stoic Doc Bradley and the flashier work of Adam Beach as the emotional Ira Hayes.
As he did in Unforgiven (1996), Mystic River (2003) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Clint Eastwood proves with Flags of Our Fathers that he is one of the most masterful of American directors. He brilliantly integrates actors, locations, sets, visual effects, music and sound in the service of a grand theme. The movie is not perfect—there are a few longueurs and occasionally too much sentimentality—but these are only small flaws in a big film that continues to roil around in your head long after you've seen it.
Pop Culture Connections
The real-life Doc Bradley, Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes once appeared briefly together in a Hollywood movie. They played themselves in the 1949 actioner Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne.
Ira Hayes died in 1955 at age 32, and his tragic story has been told several times over the years. Tony Curtis played him in the biopic The Outsider (1961), and Peter LaFarge wrote a song titled "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" that has been recorded by a number of artists, the best-known rendition probably being the one by Johnny Cash.
DVD Details
The Flags of Our Fathers DVD contains no bonus materials of any kind. Below I've listed the DVD details.
Release Date: February 6, 2007
Widescreen (2.35:1), Color
Feature Film Run Time: 2 Hours 12 Minutes
MPAA Rating: R for Sequences of Graphic War Violence and Carnage and for Language
English 5.1 Dolby Digital
English 2.0 Surround
French 5.1 Dolby Digital
English Subtitles
Spanish Subtitles
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