Ken Watanabe, right, in Letters from Iwo Jima.
Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers related the battle of Iwo Jima from the U.S. side. But it was his superb sidebar film, on the Japanese army's desperate defense of the island, led by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe, above right), that won critics' raves and four Oscar nominations. As they adopt a holding pattern they know will end in their deaths, the soldiers symbolize all those lonely fighters for whom duty and honor trump reason.
—Richard Corliss