Heroic offering

IF PETS grow to resemble their owners, or vice versa, does the same apply to filmmakers. If their careers last long enough, do their films ultimately reflect their own personalities?

That seems to be the case with Clint Eastwood. His films are becoming increasingly spare and laconic but at the same time they also become more eloquent.

Since Unforgiven, Eastwood seems to be embarking on a journey of enormous introspection, in the process putting the American psyche under the microscope. Or at least the psyche of a specific generation, the one he belongs to and is generally referred to in American popular culture as The Greatest Generation.

This is the generation that fought the Second World War, the men who died on the beaches of Normandy and Pacific Islands such as Iwo Jima. These are the men whose motivation is explored by Eastwood in this extraordinary film.

If Unforgiven is a meditation on violence and by extension his own career, Flags of Our Fathers looks at what it means to be a hero and again, by extension, looks at another aspect of Eastwood's screen persona.

The raising of the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima was a turning point for the US in the Second World War. The Americans' island-hopping campaign had taken them to Iwo Jima and for the first time they were setting foot on Japanese soil.

The fighting was bitter, brutal, and bloody. Casualties, especially on the Japanese side, were catastrophically high. But early in the fighting six marines hoisted the Stars and Stripes on top of the mountain and the moment was captured in what became an iconic photograph.

Three of those six men died in the next few days; the remaining three were shipped home to go on a fundraising tour to raise money to continue to fight an increasingly unpopular war.

The men took to it in different ways. Doc Bradley (Ryan Philippe) was sober and serious and took it in with detached amusement, Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) revels in his new-found celebrity, but Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a native American, is deeply troubled by it all.

The film is based on the book of the same name by James Bradley, son of the Ryan Phillippe character, who tried to find out what happened at Iwo Jima in an attempt to discover something of his own father.

What he finds is a remarkable portrait of the best kind of heroism, the sort in which men die not for their country but for their comrades in arms. The film dwells on the camaraderie and kinship forged in this adversity.

There is also the suggestion that in being forcibly removed from the fighting and pressed into service on an increasingly desperate media tour, these three men suffer from something approaching survivor guilt. As the story flashes back and forward between their experiences and those of their comrades still fighting it's not difficult to sense their feeling that they should be there.

Eastwood's spartan direction means the story emerges from the performances. Unlike Steven Spielberg who reinvented war as epic entertainment in Saving Private Ryan, Eastwood chooses a more intimate approach. Phillippe, Bradford and especially Adam Beach are eloquent witnesses to this story of ordinary men pushed to extraordinary lengths.

Eastwood was so taken with this subject he immediately started filming a version telling the story of the suicidal defence of the island by the Japanese. That film, Letters from Iwo Jima, is scooping up awards right left and centre in the US.

It arrives here in February and if it's as good as this one then it is going to be well worth seeing. Director: Clint Eastwood Running time: 132mins NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (pg) Knock-off is a monster mish-mash

IT STRIKES me that if you are going to make a film that is essentially a Jumanji knock-off, the last thing you want to do is reinforce the point by casting Robin Williams in a prominent role.

In Jumanji animals came to life in a board game and rampaged in the real world. In Night at the Museum, it's the exhibits at the New York Natural History Museum that come to life when darkness falls.

It's all to do with the occult influence of a gold tablet belonging to an Egyptian pharaoh. The elderly night watchmen - Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs - plan to steal the tablet to fund their retirement but first they need someone to frame.

Enter Ben Stiller, a desperate divorcee who needs a job to keep his apartment so he can see his estranged son. Stiller is an unwitting patsy who finds himself in all sorts of mayhem.

Only Teddy Roosevelt - alias Robin Williams - can save him and stop him from going to jail thus losing his son forever.

There is such a lot wrong with Night at the Museum that it's hard to know where to start. For one thing Ben Stiller is terribly miscast.

Stiller's stock in trade is anger, bitterness, and general meanness. He doesn't do the sort of warmth that this role calls for; in fact Robin Williams would have been a much better bet.

The special effects are good but audiences are now surely so sophisticated they ceased to be dazzled by this sort of thing a long time ago. The effects are just the icing on the cake these days and without a decent script - and laughs are few and far between here - they are not going to cut it on their own.

Generally though the whole film seems uninspired depending, as it does, on the museum being the only such institution in the world without CCTV. A quick swatch at some video footage and the nocturnal jig would be up. Director: Shawn Levy Running time: 108mins ZOOM (pg) Faded superhero fails to thrill

THIS comedy has been hanging around for a little while now and, following an unsuccessful release in the US, presumably it is being slipped out now in the hope that it might mop up some of the Tim Allen overspill from his hit Santa Clause 3.

Allen is Captain Zoom, a faded superhero called out of retirement to train a bunch of kids to face something called a "pandimensional anomaly" which is heading towards Earth.

Heading along with it is Captain Zoom's evil brother Concussion so this time it's personal as far as Zoom is concerned.

The film starts brightly but quickly fades, partly because of a weak script and partly because the kids he is training are the lamest superhero concepts around.

Allen is all bluster but he's done this before and better in Galaxy Quest while Courtney Cox struggles in a thankless role as a comic stooge psychoanalyst.

Zoom might just make it but only if your kids are very young or very undemanding. Director: Peter Hewitt Running time: 83mins