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(More customer reviews)"Sands of Iwo Jima" was the first movie I ever saw in which John Wayne played a character who actually died, which was certainly one of the more shocking deaths I can remember ever seeing in a film. Wayne plays Sgt. John Marion Stryker and since Wayne's real name was Marion Michael Morrison there seems to be an additional level of identification between actor and character here, while the power of the name "Stryker" is obvious. Stryker seems a bully to the green recruits he is training to be U.S. Marines in 1943. When the men of the rifle squad learn that Stryker's wife had taken their son and left him they think they know the reason why the man who was once the epitome of the tough Marine has become such a martinet.
Of course when Stryker and his men hit the beach at Tarawa and are fighting for their lives against the Japanese troops defending the island, they understand that his hard lessons are the difference being life and death in combat. Then comes the last hard nut to crack of the islands occupied by the Japanese, the volcanic island of Iwo Jima. As the officer briefing the troops says, "nobody knows exactly what they've got on this island, but they've had forty years to put it there." Director Allan Dwan takes advantage of actual combat footage from the documentaries "With the Marines at Tarawa" and "To the Shores of Iwo Jima" to provide an added dimension of realism to the battle sequences. The reenactment of the flag raising on Iwo Jima involved Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, and John Bradley, the only three Marines in the celebrated photograph who survived the battle.
Since this is a Hollywood war movie Stryker's rifle squad consists of not just new recruits but a few veterans, including Al Thomas (Forrest Tucker), an old enemy who is perfectly willing to bad mouth the sergeant at every opportunity, even after he is taken out behind the tents by Stryker to be reminded who is running the outfit. The recruit who absorbs all of this venom the most is young Peter Conway (John Agar), whose father was Stryker's Commanding Officer at Guadalcanal. The old man felt his son was too soft to be a Marine (he reads books and went to college) and the kid resents the particular interest Stryker is taking in his training. Even when Stryker saves Conway's life when the kid is too busy reading a love letter to notice a live grenade gets loose during a training exercise, Conway refuses to show gratitude. So in addition to their relationship and sergeant and private Stryker and Conway are playing out their own familial relationship problems with each other as well.
It is in battle that Stryker is at his best, blowing up a Japanese bunker to save trapped Marines, and once he proves himself to be a warrior god his squad, now tested in battle, finally becomes a true band of brothers. But "The Sands of Iwo Jima" has the elements of a Greek tragedy and at the moment of his apotheosis the hero must fall. Adding insult to injury the blow comes from behind and the shot of a bullet hole beneath Stryker's stenciled name on the back of his fatigues is even more powerful than the reenactment of the raising of the second American flag on Mt. Surabachi.
This is not the best war movie of 1949; that honor goes to William Wellman's "Battleground," which remains one of the very best of the best in the World War II genre. Wayne was nominated for Best Actor, the only other time he was up for an Oscar besides "True Grit," although he arguably gave a better performance that same year in his previous film "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." Despite the pair of strong performances by the Duke the Academy Award went to Broderick Crawford for "All the King's Men," but "Sands of Iwo Jima" remains Wayne's best WWII movie and one of the few that stands up with his classic westerns."
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