War, espionage and obsession

When the year draws to a close, movies get more serious, hoping for both holiday crowds and Oscar nominations. Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, a return to the famous battle of World War II like his last film, "Flags of Our Fathers," but told this time from the viewpoint of the Japanese defending the island, certainly deserves serious consideration for top honors.

In "Letters" the Japanese high command realizes that defeat is near, and the island is to be the base for the U.S. invasion of their country. This awareness is reinforced by the film's elegiac atmosphere, captured both in the film's somber music and in the performance of Ken Watanabe as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a Japanese officer who had admired America while serving here before the war. His country's situation is desperate. Japan not only has no planes to challenge the Americans, it can't even mail out the letters its troops write home during the last days before the battle. Kuribayashi orders a soldier, Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a former baker whose life he has saved, to burn all the letters, including his own, but the latter puts them in a burlap bag and buries it. Recently uncovered, the letters were the source for the film's superb screenplay by Iris Yamashita.

The movie demonstrates the Japanese general's superior military intelligence as well as his deep humanity. He plans the system of tunnels that provide the basic defense of the island and insists on medical help for a captured GI in danger of being abandoned in battle. There is great sympathy for the Japanese defenders, but "Letters" also reveals the fanaticism that some soldiers had absorbed. In contrast, the young baker hopes only to return to his wife and see his baby daughter for the first time.

Though "Letters" reflects the primitive rage of battle, horror is minimized by Mr. Eastwood's majestic direction.

Advance word on The Good German was that it dealt with Berlin at the end of World War II and used black-and-white photography to create the noir feeling of a 1940s classic like "Foreign Affair." Expectations soared when director Steven Soderbergh secured George Clooney and Cate Blanchett as the leads, both stars who recall Hollywood's glamour days.

Mr. Clooney plays Jake Geismer, a military journalist who returns to the post-war ruins of Berlin to cover the Potsdam meetings. There he finds his ex-lover, Lena Brandt (Ms. Blanchett), who hopes to get out of Germany but meanwhile works as a prostitute. Drawing on older, self-conscious acting methods, the two give performances that show remarkable understanding. Jake's young soldier-driver (Tobey Maguire) exploits the black market and knows the war was the best thing that ever happened to him. Unknown to Jake, he is also Lena's new lover.

But "The Good German" is more about espionage than the lives of lovers, with each twist of the film depicting the search for ex-Nazi rocket scientists and war criminals. Nobility and honesty are in short supply and survival at any cost is the first commandment. Paul Attanasio's screenplay provides clear scenes and crisp dialogue that remind us of 1940s films. Technical shortcomings, however, undermine the final effect; much of the photography looks as washed out as the archival footage from the war. Although director Soderbergh captures some of the magic of Hollywood's golden age, his film shows that presenting the old as the new is not a simple task.

Directed by actor Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd is a two-and-a-half hour history of the CIA that should hold viewers on the edge of their seats with its numerous subplots. Matt Damon is impressive as the stoic, tightlipped career agent Edward Wilson, drafted from the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale at the end of World War II. As we follow his career up to the Bay of Pigs crisis, the time frame shifts abruptly from scene to scene, creating an atmosphere of near-paranoia. Wilson abandons a young deaf woman, played by Tammy Blanchard, to marry the daughter of an influential family, played by Angelina Jolie. Their home life is constantly under strain as secret photos and tape recordings tighten a web of fate around Wilson.

The most frightening aspect of "The Good Shepherd" is that the CIA agents' indifference to violence seems no more than business as usual. Mr. De Niro casts himself as the benevolent founder of the agency, Gen. Bill Sullivan. In the film he says we need a CIA that is America's eyes and ears. But at the end, when agent Wilson enters his new office, he is told the CIA is now the nation's heart and soul. The wall of defense has become its own kingdom.

[Kevin Doherty teaches film at Manhattanville College, in Purchase, N.Y. Joseph Cunneen has been NCR's film reviewer for 15 years.]

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