Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . Iwo Jima's iconic raising of the Stars & Stripes by U.S. Marines was the only thing which kept America from negotiating an early spring 1945 cease-fire with Japan (most likely such a capitulation on our part would have required us to give the Land of the Rising Sun a 50% market share of our automobile and personal electronics business in 1945; this horrific outcome was delayed three decades by our victory on Iwo Jima and Japan's Unconditional Surrender in the face of Nuclear Holocaust). Clint's hypothesis is impossible to prove one way or the other, but what IS a known fact is that John Wayne's SANDS OF IWO JIMA is the main thing that kept cost-cutting Congressional Republicans from DISBANDING the U.S. Marine Corps by 1950. Without SANDS, we could not have experienced FULL METAL JACKET, Charles Whitman, the barracks in Beirut, Lee Harvey Oswald, or Gomer Pyle. "Hoo-Rah" would not have become the catch-phrase of W.'s presidency, and we would have had to think twice about invading Iraq (or Grenada, for that matter). SANDS features the "Marine Hymn" sung or played off-and-on throughout its duration. The key phrase of this verse is "To keep our Honor clean." Thanks to SANDS, the USMC has remained on the job these past 65 years, just like those Tidy Bowl ad "scrubber bubbles," keeping America's Honor as clean as possible. It's sort of frightening to think of what our Honor would look like today if not for SANDS and our still-in-business Marines!

Theo Robertson I once saw a documentary about John Wayne and something surprised me . Not the fact John Wayne never saw active service because we all know that while James Stewart was bombing the heart out of Nazi Germany as a squadron leader and Rod Steiger lied about his age to join the US Navy the Duke decided to help the allied war effort by making films in Hollywood which if one is to be honest had the same effect on destroying fascism the battle of Stalingrad and the atomic bomb combined . In April 1945 when Hitler herd Big John was going to make yet another flag waver he pulled out a gun and blew his brains out . There's no evidence of this but it's an established fact and who needs the Red Army when you've got John Wayne making movies . So no what surprised me about this BBC documentary is that the proud United States Marine Corps show THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA to all recruits as part of basic training ! A bit puzzling but it could be worse and could have shown them THE GREEN BERETS instead . I'm also guessing the marine recruits are a bit thankful to escape beastings for a couple of hours and enjoy some escapist fantasy cunningly disguised as a war drama Sorry old boy but this limey thinks this while not being a bad film doesn't really perceive it as being a good one either . It crams in as much cliché as is humanly possible . I suppose the cliché of a tough as nails almost inhuman drill sergeant with a heart of gold might have been less unconvincing in 1949 but since it's been used so often since then it's almost seems a war film isn't complete without one . There are also a few jarring scenes where the action cuts from an obvious studio set to real life footage . This jarring quality also extends to real life marines who fought in the battle playing real life marines . Their courage is beyond comprehension but their acting skills are lacking and are every bit as wooden as the Duke . One wonders if the praise this film constantly receives might be down to jingoism . You don't like this film ? Does that mean you hate the USMC , Uncle Sam and capitalist democracy itself ? I don't think it does but I do know a mediocre movie with a wooden film star when I see one and this is one of them

Maciste_Brother A ridiculous propaganda war movie with a hot-headed sergeant who enjoys nothing but to fight, clobber, duke it out with his soldiers whenever he feels like it without any repercussions. I was actually into the movie but after the 4 or 5th fight between Stryker and one of his subordinates, I couldn't get into it anymore. Certainly after Stryker (John Wayne) fights with Thomas (Forrest Tucker) and Thomas is fine with it, the two men talking to each other as if nothing had happened. The film's credibility, already stretched to the limit with the typical Hollywood war-time propaganda, was thrown out the window with that fight. Yes, Wayne is a manly man and I'm sure soldiers fight with each other but this was ridiculous, veering into the realm of fetish. I mean if your sergeant drags you in the middle of the forest and starts pummeling your face just because of some disagreement but then once the fight is over, the man at the receiving end doesn't complain and is fine and dandy with it, well, the homoerotic subtext suddenly becomes clear. The fighting, btw, is not shown as horseplay. Who cares about fighting the enemy with a sergeant like Stryker? This kind of behaviour wouldn't have been tolerated in reality but because this a John Wayne fantasy based on some real characters/events, well the machismo has be flowing in order to keep audiences entertained and what's more entertaining than seeing John Wayne getting his kicks and showing who's on, eh, top? Seriously underwhelmed by this so-called classic.

carvalheiro "Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949) directed by Allan Dwan in its modesty as movie was interesting because concerning namely the photography, which is instinctively made as though it was similar when it occurs like during the event itself. Near the recent myth of the images distributed elsewhere around the world, also as news after the battle with great losses from the soldiers who took part, expelling in that past occasion from the island the Japanese soldiers. Director Allan Dwan with this B picture immortalized this act, with a lack of much more production recourses to bring us a better movie, but it was also that fragility what putted inside the true history in his own plot, by the feeling of a document much more authentic in its similarity with the almost forgotten same event, barely five years after the end of the war in Pacific islands.For me what I remember as young of the main scene is the acting as though something of unexpected and not well prepared, but nonetheless well done like the feeling of an accomplished aim when some of the mariners in several positions, putting the leaning flag as pushing it against the slope almost shadowy as a strange cliff on the island horizon : leaning their bodies drilling a hole on the ground and in meantime one of them took snapshots and from these all newspapers sometime later made a choice of one, the one whose fame was known since then. This reconstitution is so well made by Dwan team, that it still makes emotion to the viewers over a landscape as though before derelict. Something of a touch from random that allowed to take this single picture, almost without any previous preparation as improvised it was the feeling on it with a leaned flag, observed by an infinite stand on the land of the battle with the corpses and the wounded imposing the framework of the composition, inspiring plenitude and the strength of tired muscles after great losses of human beings there in that war. It became one of the few most popular photographs of the WWII, the moment of high intensity and dramatic tension also on this movie and too a great chance for the almost anonymous survivors in it, as though in statuesque kind of stressing immobility for a second by a single imperfect shot and quite dark on the bottom of the slope, because the mental foolish of the death toll in it but bypassed by a few men up and down as mere working boundary of living.