Letters from Iwo Jima follows the infamous battle from the point of view of the Japanese fighting for the island. The titular letters did nothing for the movie except foster cheap soap-opera melodrama and sloppy filmmaking. I found the cinematography pedestrian and the desaturated colors worthless. It was long and supremely unexciting; and it brought nothing new to the war movie genre. There were too many superfluous characters and side plots to the point where the story itself got to be confusing. And the sense of time in this movie was extremely difficult to follow (a month or two would pass randomly and we would have no idea) thanks to the plebeian editing. What I did like about the movie was the depiction of war. This is not your typical war movie because these men are not fighting, but merely trying to survive. There were some events that I wasn't expecting that jarred me and kept me interested. I really liked almost all of the acting. And it's not bad per se, there's just nothing new here. Not recommended.IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0498380/