Finally saw this movie last night, after The Flags of Our Father about two months ago . We crowded in front of a not so big laptop after a birthday dinner, turned off the lights at the Cross Cultural Hall, and enjoyed the surprisingly-not-bad audio from my 500 yen speaker (I'm so loving them right now!).
Parallel to the Flags, Letters gave us glimpses of minutes in the Japanese soldiers' lives at the island, during the siege at the ending of WW II--it even has some of the parallel scenes with the former.
But unlike the Flags, the story in this one solely revolved at the island, and for a movie that had been directed by an American, Letters really felt like a Japanese production; a bit slow in pace but rich with details. Making me salute Eastwood more for this version.
While the emotion was more thickly tasted in Letters, rather than in Flags--well, for me anyway, the characters in it also left strong impacts. I really was finding it hard not to fell for the Saigo character, rooting for him to come back to the main island safely, and hating the Americans for invading Iwo Jima.
Ken Watanabe really looked dashingly handsome in this movie, also his friend Lieutenant Colonel Nishi, if I may add ;-p. Really fit the image of a charismatic general that we certainly cannot hate even though his on the enemy side.
There was one loose string on the whole web, I didn't quite feel it at the scene where Nishi read the American soldier's letter. Too bad. It was the potential tears producer's scene. But anyway, I like the ending, where Saigo really lived up to his name; "the last."
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Images: rottentomatoes.com
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