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Average User Score: 9 (83 sources)

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Mwatcher123

-1

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GENIUS!
Often times you find, in WWII movies, that the perspective of the Allied soldiers is overplayed. A great change in seeing the Axis side of this war. Authentic and very introspective, challenges the general thought that Allies were...
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GENIUS!
Often times you find, in WWII movies, that the perspective of the Allied soldiers is overplayed. A great change in seeing the Axis side of this war. Authentic and very introspective, challenges the general thought that Allies were the great humanitarian liberators who treated POWs in more human ways than the Axis. I especially like the way that this movie shows the elegibility of Japanese compassion so vigorously denied in American propaganda and media. What also draws this movie on a genius level is it is accurately displaying the mentalities and ironies of war. Soldiers breakdown, some surrender and some are driven to the point of suicide. It is not just a must-see, it is an absolute must-own.

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Posted jan 21, 2009 12:36 pm pt

Fwirrel

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Amazing story and wonderfully told... I love how they setup the movie and how it was told through the letters sent from Iwo Jima. I also love the authenticity that it was in Japanese. Beautiful story and characters. Definitely something everyone...
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Amazing story and wonderfully told... I love how they setup the movie and how it was told through the letters sent from Iwo Jima. I also love the authenticity that it was in Japanese. Beautiful story and characters. Definitely something everyone should see.

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Posted oct 19, 2008 6:55 am pt

PipeBigboss

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The war from other eyes, this is a great story. The two sides of the war. The letters from Iwo Jima show us the fact of the defense, honor, and courage from both sides of the battle the defenses and the conquerer. The story show us all that they...
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The war from other eyes, this is a great story. The two sides of the war. The letters from Iwo Jima show us the fact of the defense, honor, and courage from both sides of the battle the defenses and the conquerer. The story show us all that they use and developed in order to maintain or "give" another day of life to the motherland (Japan) and show that the both sides are almost the same, the got families, hope, dreams but they found in a war between their countries.

Great movie, great story, great visual effects.
Great direction.

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Posted nov 25, 2007 9:55 pm pt

CTUBauer24

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At frist i thougt this was going to be a good movie but it is much more then a good movie it is a awsome movie with a great story to tell and it tells it in a amazing way a great movie that has great acting great story my rating 5 BIG STARS.

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Posted jul 23, 2007 1:36 pm pt

marolia

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2nd best World War 2 movie I've ever seen!
Clint Eastwood made this film brilliant. Outstanding acting by the Japanese actors. This film shows the Japanese side, how they fought the battle in Iwo Jima. This film is not a rental, it's a must...
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2nd best World War 2 movie I've ever seen!
Clint Eastwood made this film brilliant. Outstanding acting by the Japanese actors. This film shows the Japanese side, how they fought the battle in Iwo Jima. This film is not a rental, it's a must buy for everyone.

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Posted jun 24, 2007 3:02 am pt

axrosel

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Absolutely love it. A great picture of the history of WWII from the Japanese point of view

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Posted jun 21, 2007 9:24 pm pt

Slayervorge3000

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Letters of Iwo Jima. The Japanese side of the story from the American Invasion. Lot of sick parts, Japes killing themselves for the Empire and two that wanted to surrender and one of them was shot by American other saved by American. The second...
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Letters of Iwo Jima. The Japanese side of the story from the American Invasion. Lot of sick parts, Japes killing themselves for the Empire and two that wanted to surrender and one of them was shot by American other saved by American. The second best WWII movie ever.

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Posted may 27, 2007 8:11 am pt

FilipHolm

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Letters From Iwo Jima is in a way the same movie as "Flags Of Our Fathers" but this time from the Japanise side. And it is in fact as good. Though it doesn`t have the emotional weight as "FOOF".

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Posted apr 22, 2007 1:30 am pt

xxlinkxx

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the best film of 2006 in my opinion. great acting by ken watanabe and new comer Nae Yuki. should of won best picture at the academy awards without a doubt! 10/10****

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Posted feb 27, 2007 4:04 am pt

IndieShotYou

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Letter from Iwo Jima is ultimately the greatest film of the year. Dense, psychologically and physically... The movie tells the story of Iwo Jima through the eyes of the japanese, focusing more on the war than the aftermath itself (differing from...
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Letter from Iwo Jima is ultimately the greatest film of the year. Dense, psychologically and physically... The movie tells the story of Iwo Jima through the eyes of the japanese, focusing more on the war than the aftermath itself (differing from Flags). More compelling and epic than Flags, Iwo Jima captures the soul of every soldier in an enlightened way. Disturbing and realistic the movie shows the suicidal tendencies of the japanese soldiers and the cultural and societal differences that plague the minds of every soldier on the battlefield. Eastwood has made two mesmerizing films in one year, which makes him a frontrunner for best director. A movie that is stylish in a gritty yet subtle manner, Letters from Iwo Jima is a beautiful film that will go down as a classic in foreign cinema.

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Posted jan 27, 2007 11:19 am pt

• [+] Newsweek
  
  100
  It's unprecedented, a sorrowful and savagely beautiful elegy that can stand in the company of the greatest antiwar movies.

  by David Ansen | Read Full Review »
• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  100
  Clint Eastwood's profound, magisterial, and gripping companion piece to his ambitious meditation on wartime image and reality, "Flags of Our Fathers."

  by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] Rolling Stone
  
  100
  Eastwood's direction here is a thing of beauty, blending the ferocity of the classic films of Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) with the delicacy and unblinking gaze of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story).

  by Peter Travers | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  100
  A few scenes serve as hinges joining this movie to "Flags of Our Fathers." While Letters From Iwo Jima seems to me the more accomplished of the two films -- by which I mean that it strikes me as close to perfect -- the two enrich each other, and together achieve an extraordinary completeness.

  by A.O. Scott | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  100
  Letters From Iwo Jima, takes audiences to a place that would seem unimaginable for an American director. Daring and significant, it presents a picture from life's other side, not only showing what wartime was like for our Japanese adversaries on that island in the Pacific but also actually telling the story in their language. Which turns out to be no small thing.

  by Kenneth Turan | Read Full Review »
• [+] USA Today
  
  100
  It takes a filmmaker possessed of a rare, almost alchemic, blend of maturity, wisdom and artistic finesse to create such an intimate, moving and spare war film as Clint Eastwood has done in Letters From Iwo Jima.

  by Claudia Puig | Read Full Review »
• [+] Wall Street Journal
  
  100
  The view taken by Clint Eastwood, directing from Iris Yamashita's exemplary screenplay, is elegiac, but -- and this is remarkable, given the nature of the production and the sweep of his ambition -- not at all didactic. He lets the film speak for itself, and so it does -- of humanity as well as primitive rage and horror on both sides of the battle.

  by Joe Morgenstern | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Daily News
  
  100
  "Letters" isn't about numbers or the battle or even the morality of war. It's about the sanctity of life and how we value our own.

  by Jack Mathews | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Post
  
  100
  Taken together, Eastwood's masterworks - two of the best films of 2006 - may be Hollywood's last word on World War II.

  by Lou Lumenick | Read Full Review »
• [+] Premiere
  
  100
  Letters from Iwo Jima isn't just the film that Eastwood wanted to make, but one that the film's producer Steven Spielberg had tried to make twice with "Empire of the Sun" and "Saving Private Ryan."

  by Stephen Saito | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  100
  The word masterpiece costs nothing to write and means less than nothing in an age when every third picture and each new Clint Eastwood project is proclaimed as such. After two viewings, however, Letters From Iwo Jima strikes me as the peak achievement in Eastwood's hallowed career.

  by Michael Phillips | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  100
  It has few stars familiar to Americans, and it shares with "Pan's Labyrinth" the rare distinction of being a mainstream commercial movie with subtitles.

  by Jonathan Rosenbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] Boston Globe
  
  100
  Eloquent, bloody, and daringly simple.

  by Ty Burr | Read Full Review »
• [+] Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  100
  One of the great war movies - or antiwar movies - of all time.

  by Steven Rea | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New Republic
  
  100
  Overall, the effect is presumably what Eastwood wanted: we are present at a momentous event, not watching a movie.

  by Stanley Kauffmann | Read Full Review »