‘Flags of Our Fathers’ deserves a salute

Eastwood’s battle scenes are bound to be compared to the similar beach-attack scenes in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (Spielberg and Eastwood co-produced “Flags of Our Fathers”). The color is drained from Tom Stern’s cinematography, time seems suspended, expressive sound effects tell us more than we want to know; the glimpses of severed heads and grenade-exploded stomachs are quite graphic.

The movie goes over some of the same territory as “Sands of Iwo Jima,” a jingoistic 1949 John Wayne drama featuring Hayes, Gagnon and Bradley in bit parts as themselves, and “The Outsider,” a more downbeat 1961 drama starring Tony Curtis as Hayes and James Franciscus as the doomed buddy he mourns.

“The Outsider,” which was for a time the only film to focus on what happened to the survivors, was written by Stewart Stern, just a few years after he’d written “Rebel Without a Cause.” (Ray Daley played Gagnon and Forrest Compton was Bradley, though they’re seen only briefly.)

In Eastwood’s project, there’s also an echo of “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” the 1970 epic that tried to tell the Pearl Harbor story from both the Japanese and the American viewpoints. When Akira Kurosawa bowed out as co-director, the attempt at balance was mostly derailed, though the finished film has moments when the original concept is honored.

Eastwood has chosen to direct two versions of the Iowa Jima story by himself — and to release them as separate features. “Flags of Our Fathers” is the first to go into release. The Japanese edition, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” written by Iris Yamashita and starring Ken Watanabe, will open in theaters next year. If it’s anything like its predecessor, it will be a must.

“Flags of Our Fathers” may seem a bit distant from its subject, and even somewhat conventional at moments (the flag-raising episode in “The Outsider,” treated almost as an accident, is more arresting than the one in “Flags,” which presents it as a Major Historical Event). Yet just when you’re wondering if the picture lacks heart, it breaks through with a finale that’s deeply satisfying.

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