79
Metascore
39 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttClint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."
- 100TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissClint Eastwood has crafted a bold and meticulous epic.
- 100Village VoiceVillage VoiceTo an extent, Flags of Our Fathers is to the WWII movie what Eastwood's Unforgiven was to the western -- a stripping-away of mythology until only a harsher, uncomfortable reality remains.
- 90VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyAmbitiously tackling his biggest canvas to date, Clint Eastwood continues to defy and triumph over the customary expectations for a film career in Flags of Our Fathers.
- 90NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenAn epic both raw and contemplative, is neither a flag-waving war movie nor a debunking.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversA film of awesome power and blistering provocation.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliCharacter development is of secondary importance to narrative and theme. As a result, we never really get to know any of the film's protagonists.
- 67Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanThe trouble is, he's preaching to the choir -- or, at least, to a culture, profoundly influenced by Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" and Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," that has already absorbed the lesson that ''the Good War,'' while it may have been noble, was never less than hell.
- 50Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMaybe we won't fully understand Eastwood's film until we see the second part of this project, "Letters From Iwo Jima," his companion film seen from the Japanese viewpoint expected in 2007. On its own, however, Flags of Our Fathers merely flags.
- 50PremiereEthan AlterPremiereEthan AlterFlags of our Fathers really loses its way in the final half-hour, when the point-of-view abruptly shifts to James Bradley (played here by Tom McCarthy), who takes on the role of narrator, informing us of what happened to each of these men after the war ended and their names became yesterday's news. It's a jarring switch.