Flags of Our FathersMovie Reviews

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Avg. Critic Score: 79 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
15 Iffy for 15+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

    Stands with the best movies of this young century and the old one that preceded it: It's passionate, honest, unflinching, gripping, and it pays respects. The flag raising on Iwo might have indeed become a pseudo-event as it was processed for goals, but there was nothing pseudo about the courage of the men who did it. Read full review

  • 100
    The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt

    Clint 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." Read full review

  • 100
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    It is one of the year's best films and perhaps the finest modern film about World War II. Read full review

  • 100
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

    As he did in "Unforgiven," "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood handles this nuanced material with aplomb, giving every element of this complex story just the weight it deserves. The director's lean dispassion, his increased willingness to be strongly emotional while retaining an instinctive restraint, continues to astonish. Read full review

  • 100
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    Eastwood's two-film project is one of the most visionary of all efforts to depict the reality and meaning of battle. Read full review

  • 90
    The New York Times | Manohla Dargis

    If Flags of Our Fathers feels so unlike most war movies and sounds so contrary to the usual political rhetoric, it is not because it affirms that war is hell, which it does with unblinking, graphic brutality. It's because Mr. Eastwood insists, with a moral certitude that is all too rare in our movies, that we extract an unspeakable cost when we ask men to kill other men. There is never any doubt in the film that the country needed to fight this war, that it was necessary; it is the horror at such necessity that defines Flags of Our Fathers, not exultation. Read full review

  • 90
    Variety | Todd McCarthy

    Ambitiously 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. Read full review

  • 88
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    A film of awesome power and blistering provocation. Read full review

  • 67
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    The 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. Read full review

  • 50
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    As painstaking as a documentary but without the satisfaction of a documentary or the impact of a drama. Read full review

View more reviews for Flags of Our Fathers on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Harrowing World War II drama isn't for kids.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this harrowing World War II drama isn't for kids. The battlefield violence is graphic, with weapons ranging from tanks and grenades (explosions, flying bodies) to bayonets and knives (close-up assaults, with bloody, ravaged effects visible). The film opens with a battlefield-set nightmare, then cuts frequently between the present and flashbacks to the brutal fighting and the tour, so it's not always clear when the violence will be cropping up. Characters use frequent profanity (mostly "f--k"), smoke cigarettes in nearly every scene (except in the heat of battle), and drink plenty of alcohol, with one man in particular becoming drunk as he grieves his dead comrades and feels guilty for surviving. There's a brief reference to masturbation.
  • Families can talk about the legacy of World War II, often thought of as the "good war." What gets left out of the equation (pain, violence, other devastating experiences) when people look back and focus on the heroism of war? Is there such a thing as the "true" version of history? Also, how do the men who go on the fund-raising tour realize that they're being treated as commercial products? How do they suffer as a consequence? How does the movie question the notion of "heroism" as it's used to promote war?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: The administration exploits the young flag-raisers to sell war bonds; there's racism directed toward a Native American Marine; heroes argue, drink, and fight; criticism of the artifice of the fund-raising tour; lying to mothers of dead Marines.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Repeated, harrowing violence (mostly related to war): explosions, gunfire, bayoneting, stabbing; weapons include flamethrowers, cannons, automatic weapons, tanks, swords, grenades, missiles; are bodies thrown and exploded; grisly images include a head dropping on one soldier, heroes stabbing enemies, Japanese suicides by grenades, burning bodies, a tank rolling over a body, and Marines killed by "friendly fire" from a Navy ship; a body is discovered in a corral by kids (the body is viewed from above, at a distance).
  • sex false0 Sex: A joke about "masturbation papers" is played on a young Marine.
  • language false5 Language: Repeated use of "f--k" (30+), as well as frequent other profanity ("s--t," "jackass," "a--hole," "hell," "damn"); thematic and repeated pejorative references to Ira's Native American idenity ("redskin," "squaw," "wigwam"); derogatory reference to "A-rabs."
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Flag-raisers are treated as commercial "product," so the issue is thematic.
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Frequent cigarette smoking (soldiers smoke incessantly, except when in battle); hard, sad drinking (Ira drinks to get drunk, then stumbles, cries, and acts out his frustrations).
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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Dave White

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