"It seems hard to believe there is anything left to say about World War II that has not already been stated and restated, chewed, digested and spat out for your consideration and that of the Oscar voters. And yet here, at age 76, is Clint Eastwood saying something new and vital about the war in his new film, and here, too, is this great, gray battleship of a man and a movie icon saying something new and urgent about the uses of war and of the men who fight. �Flags of Our Fathers� concerns one of the most lethal encounters on that distant battlefield, but make no mistake: this is also a work of its own politically fraught moment.

The film distills much of the material covered in James Bradley and Ron Powers�s affecting book of the same title about the raising of the American flag during the battle for Iwo Jima. Mr. Bradley�s father, John Bradley, nicknamed Doc and played by an effectively restrained Ryan Phillippe, was one of six men who helped plant the flag (it was the second planted that day) on the island�s highest point on the fifth day of the monthlong American offensive. An Associated Press photographer, Joe Rosenthal, immortalized the moment, and American politicians seized the day, sending the three surviving flag raisers � Doc, Ira Hayes (Adam Beach, delivering heartbreak by the payload) and Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) � on a hugely successful war-bond drive.

Collectively hailed as heroes from sea to shining sea, Rene embraced the spotlight, Doc settled into stoic unhappiness, while Ira, a Pima Indian shattered by Iwo Jima and its dead, sobbed and drank himself into oblivion. The efforts of Doc�s adult son (Tom McCarthy) to tell his father�s story years later give the film its scaffolding, but it is Mr. Beach�s Ira, with his open face and vulnerability, who haunts it. Tears mixing with booze, he floods his scenes with raw emotion that serves as a rebuke to gung-ho fictions like �Sands of Iwo Jima,� a 1949 bad joke in which John Wayne hands an American flag to the real Ira, Doc and Rene so they can raise Old Glory once more, this time over the sands of Southern California."

Get the Story:
A Ghastly Conflagration, a Tormented Aftermath (The New York Times 10/20)
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Relevant Links:
Flags of Our Fathers - http://www.flagsofourfathers.net
Adam Beach, official message board - http://www.adam-beach.com/beach_talk

Related Stories:
Adam Beach wins 'Rising Star' award for 'Flags' role (10/17)
Adam Beach praised for portrayal of Ira Hayes (10/10)
Adam Beach plays Ira Hayes in 'Flags of Our Fathers' (10/6)