Letters From Iwo Jima is Clint Eastwood's finest film in years. I wanted to get that out of the way right up front. I was a fan of both Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River, but for my money, this picture is much stronger. Furthermore, Letters From Iwo Jima offers up everything I wanted from it's companion piece, Flags of Our Fathers. This isn't to say that "Flags" was a bad movie - far from it. "Letters" is just the stronger film that resonates with a much deeper emotional core.

Essentially, Letters From Iwo Jima covers much of the same ground as Flags of Our Fathers, it just does so from the Japanese point of view. The end result is a beautiful, haunting, and harrowing portrait of war.

In Letters From Iwo Jima, Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) plays General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. His mission; to lead his troops in the battle of Iwo Jima. Making this mission all the more tough is in knowing that he and his men probably wouldn't be returning home from battle.

Before and during the battle, Eastwood introduces us to these men through conversations and flashback snapshots, and before long, the obvious is made clear. These enemies of the United States were no different than us. They had families, they had dreams, and they too, were afraid. And while this might sound like cheesy, cliched melodrama, it's sheer poetry in the hands of Eastwood.

The entire film was shot in Japanese with English subtitles save for a few scenes in which the Japanese come into contact with American soldiers, and this authenticity adds to the film's effectiveness.

Ken Watanable is outstanding as the stoic Kuribayashi, and as good as he is, it would be near impossible to single him out because the entire cast is extraordinary. This is one of the best ensembles of the year.

Letters From Iwo Jima treads touchy terrain, but Eastwood never allows the film to become one sided. There are villains, heroes, and common folk on both sides of the fence, and in treating the subject matter in this fashion, this film becomes an anti-war anthem on a scale we rarely see. There's something incredibly human and honest in Eastwood's depiction of war.

Having said that, there's nothing sugar coated here. When the film is immersed in the horrors of battle, Letters From Iwo Jima is brutal and unflinching. There's one sequence in particular in which a Japanese troop is forced into a suicide pact. Folklore would have us all believe that soldiers would willingly give in to this traditional way of life. In "Letters" however, we are shown that some soldiers were in fact scared by such tradition.

While Letters From Iwo Jima delves into the strategy and tragedy of war, it is the quieter, character moments that really give the film it's power. Screenwriters Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis have created an important, heartfelt, and honorable view of war, and Eastwood has brought that view to the screen like a true master.

There's been a lot of talk about Letters From Iwo Jima's recent Best Picture Oscar nomination. For what it's worth, I think it's the best of the five nominees (although The Departed and The Queen come in a close second and third) and had I seen it in time, it most certainly would have made my best of 2006 list