Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) It’s very rare for an American-made war film to portray a battle from the failures’ perspective—it’s something else to practically make the US armed forces the “enemy,” from their point of view.

But director Clint Eastwood has made something unique and special with “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the companion piece to his “Flags of Our Fathers.”

That film showed the same battle from the Americans’ perspective, how iconic symbols can be formed, and asked the question of what it means to be a “hero.” “Letters from Iwo Jima” is the film that completes the portrayal of the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima. (Both films were released a few months apart in 2006.)