We start out with a 10 - The historical accuracy of the events. The battle scenes. The captivating portrayal of General Kuribayashi by Ken Watanabe. Seeing this battle from the japanese perspective felt very fresh and actually made me research a bit more about the Japanese during WW2 (for example - I heard for the first time about the thousand-stich belts or senninbari) Not to mention sets, costumes and the poetic flow of the script, handled gracefully by Clint Eastwood - truly this film has a lot going for it, and I recommend it, but...
We go down to a 9 - The budget of this film was only 19 million dollars. Some commercials have cost more. I have to say - the team did an excellent job making a two and a half hour long war film on such a tight budget, but there is an aspect which has suffered because of that - the CGI. It has not aged well at all. Some scenes get away with it, but when the American fleet shows up and when Marines land on the beach... it's bad. Maby with a bigger budget they could've done it practically instead of relying on CGI.
Even still - down to an 8 - There's a lot of cheesy moments. Maby that's subjective, but I really felt like some scenes lost their purpose in emotions. Maby it just me, but there are 4 motivational speeches to the troops, and 2 are from the same guy. It just got a little repetitive, and "banzai" didn't have the same impact second time around.
We hit a 7 - the whole letter thing feels forced. There's actually a sizable portion of the film, where I forgot that there even are letters. At times the flashbacks also seemed a bit too cliche or cheesy, or just uninspiring. Towards the end of the film they get a lot more emotional which I liked, because they seemed to match the overall poetic doom of the script.
At the end - it's a 7 for me - Historically accurate, beautiful language throughout, production is excellent despite limitations. Disregarding minor flaws and dated CGI, it's a good film, but at times I got the feeling it could be better. I recommend you to see it for yourself.
We go down to a 9 - The budget of this film was only 19 million dollars. Some commercials have cost more. I have to say - the team did an excellent job making a two and a half hour long war film on such a tight budget, but there is an aspect which has suffered because of that - the CGI. It has not aged well at all. Some scenes get away with it, but when the American fleet shows up and when Marines land on the beach... it's bad. Maby with a bigger budget they could've done it practically instead of relying on CGI.
Even still - down to an 8 - There's a lot of cheesy moments. Maby that's subjective, but I really felt like some scenes lost their purpose in emotions. Maby it just me, but there are 4 motivational speeches to the troops, and 2 are from the same guy. It just got a little repetitive, and "banzai" didn't have the same impact second time around.
We hit a 7 - the whole letter thing feels forced. There's actually a sizable portion of the film, where I forgot that there even are letters. At times the flashbacks also seemed a bit too cliche or cheesy, or just uninspiring. Towards the end of the film they get a lot more emotional which I liked, because they seemed to match the overall poetic doom of the script.
At the end - it's a 7 for me - Historically accurate, beautiful language throughout, production is excellent despite limitations. Disregarding minor flaws and dated CGI, it's a good film, but at times I got the feeling it could be better. I recommend you to see it for yourself.