Flags of Our Fathers

If you like war movies, you’ll enjoy this one. Flags of Our Fathers is one of the best accounts of the Marines’ role in U.S. wartime history. We all think of the Marines as they are represented by that famous photograph of the six soldiers raising the American flag on top of Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. Well, this story goes beyond the initial impressions and gives us an idea of what it took to get them to that point of victory.

The movie covers the story of those six soldiers and what their lives were like in the Marines long before that historic moment. It details the entire story of the Battle of Iwo Jima, and how it came to cost so many American servicemen’s lives. The movie also touches on the private battles these Marines fought, including post-war depression and the many horrific battles our soldiers continued to fight once back on American soil, such as that depression, nightmares, the response they got from their fellow Americans when they returned, and the difficulties they experienced trying to reinsert themselves back into U.S. culture, in a world that had changed so much since the time they left.

This film comes from the hand of legendary director Clint Eastwood and he does such an accurate portrayal of the lives of these soldiers that Marines and former Marines the world over have praised him for the work.

I’m not much of a war historian, but even I was able to understand and appreciate the story Eastwood was trying to tell with this film.