Letters from Iwo Jima - I loved the way this movie totally reverses the stereotypical "good Americans/evil merciless Japanese" dynamic of most Pacific Theater WWII movies. It's refreshing to see the Japanese humanized as the film does, recognizing that not everyone in the army was blinded by honor.
The scene where the American guard shoots Shimizu and the other Japanese captive is just as it should be--completely chilling. It's good for a war film to recognize that Americans weren't always saints.
Of course, neither does the movie say "Americans are evil." Even though Saigo the baker swings a shovel around at the US GI's he isn't shot on the spot as military prudence might dictate, but instead is admitted to the American line of wounded.
I also loved the symbolism of Kuribayashi's pistol: a Japanese soldier at one point guessing that he took it from a dead American's body; the revelation that it was in fact a gift from the US army at a banquet; and at the end the American soldier casually taking the bloodstained gun and jamming it into his belt. Amazingly sad and moving.
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