3. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
Letters from Iwo Jima is the highest movie on this list that Clint doesn't star in. It tells the story of The Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers - and is far superior to Flags of Our Fathers, Clint's other World War Two movie released a couple of months earlier. It's spoken almost entirely in Japanese. Ken Watanabe stars as Tadamichi Kuribayashi - a General who didn't believe any of the Propaganda that was coming from his country's leaders. The movie asserts that ,while the Japanese leaders were indeed 'the bad guys', the soldiers and the civilians were most certainly not. Obviously some, perhaps most characters did believe the Propaganda - they truly did believe that the Americans attacking them were sub-human and that they deserved no kind of sympathy or mercy. The main criticism of this film by some is that "Only those Japanese characters that had known Americans before the war show mercy." That's true. The thing is, these people seem to think that the message is "If you talk to Americans enough you'll eventually become more civilised," - I see it very differently. Of course Propaganda is going to have a different effect on people who have never left Japan and never seen an American compared to somebody who knows exactly what they're like and therefore will instantly know that the Propaganda is false. Think of how many Americans probably watch movies showing the other side of the conflict believing that the Japanese soldiers were savages. Would an American who has met Japanese veterans of the war be as likely to think that? Of course not. Ken Watanabe's portrayal of Kuribayashi is intelligent, courageous, inspiring and ultimately heart-breaking. His final scene, involving an American pistol he received as a gift, is almost beautiful in its tragedy. Ken Watanabe easily stands out as the best actor in this movie (with a performance like that he would be the best actor in the overwhelming majority of movies) but the supporting cast is also very good. The characters are well-written and three-dimensional, the dialogue is good and the pacing is just right. It's a war movie with a surprisingly small amount of action; but the acting, characters and story are so good that it simply does not matter. If anything, adding more action would be a fine way to ruin what is a near-perfect movie.