Letters from Iwo Jima

The second half of Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima epic, Letters from Iwo Jima is the first film in his career that I’m tempted to label as mawkish. I think it may be the music. Wonderfully acted with a much clearer narrative throughline than its predecessor, it’s the tale of men facing certain death. Never budging from its point of view of the Japanese during World War II, it’s an engrossing look at the other side of the war that seems to stack the deck in its own favor while going so whole hog i...