J. Mark Donaldson Movies

After bringing the story of the American soldiers who fought in the battle of Iwo Jima to the screen in his film Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood offers an equally thoughtful portrait of the Japanese forces who held the island for 36 days in this military drama. In 1945, World War II was in its last stages, and U.S. forces were planning to take on the Japanese on a small island known as Iwo Jima. While the island was mostly rock and volcanoes, it was of key strategic value and Japan's leaders saw the island as the final opportunity to prevent an Allied invasion. Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) was put in charge of the forces on Iwo Jima; Kuribayashi had spent time in the United States and was not eager to take on the American army, but he also understood his opponents in a way his superiors did not, and devised an unusual strategy of digging tunnels and deep foxholes that allowed his troops a tactical advantage over the invading soldiers. While Kuribayashi's strategy alienated some older officers, it impressed Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), the son of a wealthy family who had also studied America firsthand as an athlete at the 1932 Olympics. As Kuribayashi and his men dig in for a battle they are not certain they can win -- and most have been told they will not survive -- their story is told both by watching their actions and through the letters they write home to their loved ones, letters that in many cases would not be delivered until long after they were dead. Among the soldiers manning Japan's last line of defense are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker sent to Iwo Jima only days before his wife was to give birth; Shimizu (Ryo Kase), who was sent to Iwo Jima after washing out in the military police; and Lieutenant Ito (Shidou Nakamura), who has embraced the notion of "Death Before Surrender" with particular ferocity. Filmed in Japanese with a primarily Japanese cast, Letters From Iwo Jima was shot in tandem with Flags of Our Fathers, and the two films were released within two months of one another. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The boiling point is mighty low in this tepid action programmer. Wesley Snipes plays Jimmy Mercer, a Treasury agent whose sting operation goes bad. Engineered by Ronnie (Viggo Mortensen), a dull-witted but sadistic ex-con, the operation not only fails, but one of Jimmy's colleagues is killed by Ronnie in the process. As punishment, Jimmy is exiled to Newark, where he is given seven days to find the man responsible for the death of the officer. Meanwhile, slimy con-man Red (Dennis Hopper) has Ronnie deceived into thinking that Mercer is a big-time crook with influential connections. Red does this to enlist Ronnie's aid to participate in a third-rate crime spree. When Ronnie and Red begin their two-man crime wave, Jimmy is in relentless pursuit behind them. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi