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Flags of Our Fathers
DreamWorks SKG


7.0

based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 100 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sequences of graphic war violence and carnage, and for language

Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Barry Pepper, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Paul Walker, and Jamie Bell

Based on the bestselling book, this film chronicles the battle of Iwo Jima and the fates of the flag raisers and some of their brothers in Easy Company. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Drama \| War
WRITTEN BY:	William Broyles Jr. Paul Haggis James Bradley and Ron Powers (book)
DIRECTED BY:	Clint Eastwood
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 6, 2007 Theatrical: October 20, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	132 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."

100

Time Richard Corliss

Clint Eastwood has crafted a bold and meticulous epic.

100

Village Voice Scott Foundas

To an extent, Flags of Our Fathers is to the WWII movie what Eastwood's Unforgiven was to the western -- a stripping-away of mythology until only a harsher, uncomfortable reality remains.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

As he did in "Unforgiven," "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood handles this nuanced material with aplomb, giving every element of this complex story just the weight it deserves. The director's lean dispassion, his increased willingness to be strongly emotional while retaining an instinctive restraint, continues to astonish.

100

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Stands with the best movies of this young century and the old one that preceded it: It's passionate, honest, unflinching, gripping, and it pays respects. The flag raising on Iwo might have indeed become a pseudo-event as it was processed for goals, but there was nothing pseudo about the courage of the men who did it.

100

USA Today Claudia Puig

It is one of the year's best films and perhaps the finest modern film about World War II.

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

This is a powerful, important and, in the end, profoundly poignant movie dedicated to the lives of men and women who fight wars and shoulder the burden of becoming "heroes" to help the rest of us make sense of what remains incomprehensible.

100

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Beach ("Windtalkers") gives a tremendously moving, Oscar-caliber performance as Hayes, portrayed by Tony Curtis in an earlier movie and celebrated in a song performed by both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

100

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The picture is spectacular.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Eastwood’s two-film project is one of the most visionary of all efforts to depict the reality and meaning of battle.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Like "Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers," it fills in our sketchy impression of that famously reticent generation of ordinary young men who were asked by a frightened world to accomplish an extraordinary feat. In this case, the homage takes the form not of a photograph or a statue but of a deeper, more sympathetic understanding of their experience. A finer tribute is hard to imagine.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie offers one authentically terrific performance: Beach as Hayes. He's so painfully sympathetic in the role that he absolutely breaks your heart, and he looks like the front-runner in the best-supporting actor Oscar race.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

If Flags of Our Fathers feels so unlike most war movies and sounds so contrary to the usual political rhetoric, it is not because it affirms that war is hell, which it does with unblinking, graphic brutality. It’s because Mr. Eastwood insists, with a moral certitude that is all too rare in our movies, that we extract an unspeakable cost when we ask men to kill other men. There is never any doubt in the film that the country needed to fight this war, that it was necessary; it is the horror at such necessity that defines Flags of Our Fathers, not exultation.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Ambitiously tackling his biggest canvas to date, Clint Eastwood continues to defy and triumph over the customary expectations for a film career in Flags of Our Fathers.

Newsweek David Ansen

An epic both raw and contemplative, is neither a flag-waving war movie nor a debunking.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A film of awesome power and blistering provocation.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Eastwood's sepia-toned combat scenes are as graphic, if not quite as jolting, as those in "Ryan." And without a Tom Hanks-size star in the cast, "Flags" is not likely to do "Ryan's" blockbuster business. But "Flags," a true story directed by someone with far more faith in the audience's ability to empathize, is the better movie.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Eastwood has made an honorable movie about honor, but the naivete of the conception - which some will call purity - keeps "Flags" at arm's length from greatness.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

The cheap perfume of sentimentality wafts through the closing moments of Flags of Our Fathers. It's all the more noticeable for having been avoided so well and so long. Mr. Eastwood knows that sort of thing doesn't mix with the stench of war.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

A wrenching elegy to the "greatest generation"--a film with enough breadth and spectacle and poetry to transcend some clunky storytelling.

The New Yorker David Denby

Flags of Our Fathers is an accomplished, stirring, but, all in all, rather strange movie

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The flaws in Flags of Our Fathers are at least partly attributable to Eastwood's attempts to do too much. Still, even when he overreaches, he somehow hits the mark.

Empire Ian Nathan

Not as emotional as "Million Dollar Baby," nor as astounding as "Saving Private Ryan," but Eastwood remains the most astringent American filmmaker around.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

In the film, the music, beginning with a muted a cappella ballad, is from Eastwood himself.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Eastwood thrusts us into the period with an understated piano score (which he composed) and authentic production design by Henry Bumstead, who died last May after working on the film at 90. (He collaborated with Eastwood on 11 films, including the Oscar-winning "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby," and he's a dedicatee of "Flags.")

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Character development is of secondary importance to narrative and theme. As a result, we never really get to know any of the film's protagonists.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The trouble is, he's preaching to the choir -- or, at least, to a culture, profoundly influenced by Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" and Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," that has already absorbed the lesson that ''the Good War,'' while it may have been noble, was never less than hell.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

What begins as a sophisticated meditation on the meaning of heroism gradually slumps into leaden repetition in the second half, as the point gets watered down and belabored. After such provocative beginnings, the film finally, dutifully raises its hand in salute.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

You come out of the theater impressed by the scope of Eastwood's reach and frustrated by how little remains in his grasp. As gifted as this filmmaker is, this isn't the sort of thing he does best.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Eastwood keeps retracing the same pattern, intercutting from the battlefield to the bond circuit, from the appalling chaos where no one feels heroic to the catered dinners where heroism is the dessert that sweetens the mood and opens the chequebooks. By now, though, the twinned structure seems fragmented, and neither half gets a chance to gather any emotional momentum or to further develop the theme.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

There's a tremendous amount of material here, and the script covers too much of it, often confusingly.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

An ambitious, powerful, somber picture, but it never quite moves you the way it should.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

It's a noble undertaking, and Eastwood is stylistically bold enough to create a view of combat based mainly on images that are clearly manufactured. (As with "Saving Private Ryan," the movie's principal source is "The Big Red One," whose director, Samuel Fuller, actually experienced the war.) But this is underimagined and so thesis ridden that it's nearly over before it starts.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

As painstaking as a documentary but without the satisfaction of a documentary or the impact of a drama.

Slate Dana Stevens

It feels disrespectful to say it, but this kind of war movie, like war itself, is starting to feel sickeningly familiar.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Maybe we won't fully understand Eastwood's film until we see the second part of this project, "Letters From Iwo Jima," his companion film seen from the Japanese viewpoint expected in 2007. On its own, however, Flags of Our Fathers merely flags.

Premiere Ethan Alter

Flags of our Fathers really loses its way in the final half-hour, when the point-of-view abruptly shifts to James Bradley (played here by Tom McCarthy), who takes on the role of narrator, informing us of what happened to each of these men after the war ended and their names became yesterday's news. It's a jarring switch.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Flags of Our Fathers fails as fact or legend. It's woefully incompetent as narrative moviemaking.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

What Flags of Our Fathers is not, however, is moving, evocative, or very unique.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 100 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dave J. gave it a2:
This movie is not nearly as good as the ratings would suggest. The budget, the genera, R-rating, and director grant it several additional undeserved rating points before it was ever even viewed by most reviewers. We expect to see a mindless comedy, romance, or kiddie movie at the bottom of the scale, but nobody dares to put a "serious" movie there. This movie was simply not entertaining and therefore not that thought provoking either. When rated accurately against its peers, this movie deserves to be rated down with the likes of "Who's Your Caddy?", "Giggli" and "See Spot Run", even if it is a far superior film-making effort.

Tony B. gave it an8:
A cynical and uncomfortable film, the likes of which we seldom get a chance to see, "Flags of our Fathers" is quite a piece of work and succeeds on all levels.

uzi e gave it a5:
Long, boring, poorly acted. the war scenes were pretty but incredibly fake looking.

Clint D. gave it a5:
Eastwood should stick to his tried & true formula of stories about flawed heroes. He's confused the viewer with a muddled picture of real, historic, heroes that suffered greatly subsequent to their sacrifice. In FOOF he presents a story, I believe, that criticizes & impugnes a generation that fought many economic, social and physical threats and looked to elevate men to hero status because it was a time when we needed heroes. Certainly the nature of heroism has always been a subject of art; Eastwood has not presented anything new in FOOF. The story was presented in a very confusing manner with flashback/forwards, characters in multiple manifestations, underveloped characters, voiceovers, etc. Characters were shown in heroic conditions yet their heroic credentials, as presented in the plot, seemed to be questioned?...because they were promoted by government handlers?...they were the "2nd flag" raisers? I don't believe in contemporary history of the time there was any widespread question of the 2nd flag raising being an act staged. It's only contempory culture that would acuse our military of staged photo opps as in Iraq. We've become a culture that to an extent elevates the "anti-hero" and shuns the adoration or even comtemplation for our present day military heroes who sacrifice all for us....how many contemporary celebrations of heroic stories from the war on terror are there on CNN or other art forms? Maybe one day we'll return to a time when we respect heroic action and, if by chance, we apply some amount of myth to their accomplishments, then they are nevertheless appreciated.

Drew gave it a4:
The direction, acting and painfully boring political spectrum involving the war leads to a war movie that has each character mearly one politicians handshake away from becoming a cliched and forgettable film experience. There is absolutely no connection between the characters and with such long pauses between past, present, future and politics you almost forget that Eastwood set out to do a film about war. This movie is definietly not worth the time and suggest seeing Letters from Iwo Jima where Eastwood gets it right

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
A unique, powerful war spectacle. Iwo jima's well shot, but since it's shown in pieces scattered throughout the film, it hard to put the whole thing together. Also, the focus on media portrayal of "heroes" and what a hero really is creates an emotional depth that is rarely matched these days.

Chris M. gave it a9:
An unusual war film that seems far more congruent with reality than any of the other WWII flicks of recent years. Despite not much time spent on the characters, smart viewers will still find time to empathize with them as they're thrown about in a story of unusual structure and scope. For the most part this works. Despite minor narrative flaws, this is for me the most real, affecting and smartest WWII film in modern times. Strangely, it goes against all of the worn out and overbearing themes of the far better received "Letters from Iwo Jima" (an obvious Paul Haggis script where "Crash" meets "Saving Private Ryan" with Japanese actors). This is the better film.

Flags of Our Fathers DreamWorks SKG

Flags of Our Fathers
DreamWorks SKG