Flags of Our Fathers

Everything started with A Fistful of Dollars. Mind you, it really started with Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the story of a masterless samurai from which Leone borrowed heavily for his first collaboration with Clint Eastwood. So the grizzled lone American, the harsh plains of the new found West really originate in Japan. Actually, if you're watching closely, it began with Red Harvest, a 1929 novel by Dashiell Hammett, which Kurosawa scholars assert was the inspiration behind Yojimbo. Wherever the circular effect of inspiration for the Man With No Name began, there's no denying it established Eastwood as America's cold hearted, lonely anti-hero.

Now, over forty years after asking for three coffins, the lone gunman is probably Hollywood's most revered living director, and his latest film, Flags of Our Fathers, based on the book of the same name, is released this month. Emphasising American values and the importance of morals and the team, Flags... is a movie about the lives of five marines and one medic who took part in the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of WWII's costliest battles, and who were immortalised by Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.

In a contrast to the status quo, Eastwood realised the complex issues behind the battle, and on a grander scale the war itself, and Flags... accompanies Letters from Iwo Jima, a movie due next year examining the same event from the Japanese perspective. How did all that come about?

Eastwood claims he did not want to make a war movie, but was drawn to this story because, "What intrigued me about it was the book itself and the fact that it wasn't really a war story, it was just a study of these people, and I've always been curious about families who find out things about their relatives much after the fact."

The importance of the photograph inadvertently reflects the war today. Contrary to popular opinion, the raising of the flag did not signify the end of the Battle of Iwo Jima. It would be another month before the fighting stopped, during which time three of the marines in the picture would lose their lives. This lack of finality, and the misguided public view, is familiar, but not the reason why Eastwood claims to have made the films.

The focus is, and rightly so, on the high cost of Iwo Jima. 22,000 Japanese troops were stationed on the island, with just over 1,000 surviving against insurmountable Allied numbers. Allied forces suffered 26,000 casualties fighting entrenched Japanese defences. It is in these figures that the importance of the flag raising lies. Eastwood did not make the films to glorify one side over the other, but to ensure that wherever the battle began, or whichever side won, the world remembers "that the price is pretty heavy and that the price is something the military people are always ready to stand by and pay, and people should be appreciative of that."

The Oscar nods that will inevitably be afforded to Flags... and/or Letters will further Eastwood's evolution from B-movie hero to conscientious director, and deservedly so - the lone gunman no longer needs a six shooter to make his point.