' Taiheiyo no Kiseki — Fokkusu to Yobareta Otoko (Oba: The Last Samurai)'

Japanese mass-audience movies about the country's military during World War II are usually melodramatic, sentimental or blatantly nationalistic. But their pure-hearted tokkotai (suicide squad) pilots flying to certain death are hardly representative of the typical Japanese soldier who, as the war entered its last, desperate days, was often starving, hunted and thinking more about survival than glory, self-immolating or no.

Clint Eastwood's 2006 "Letters from Iwo Jima" starred Ken Watanabe as the brilliant real-life general who led the defense of Iwo Jima against the invading Americans, but the heart of its story was the struggle of an ordinary private (Kazunari Ninomiya) to somehow make it out of the inferno alive. The film celebrated courage on both sides, but presented war as the nasty, brutal business it is.

Hideyuki Hirayama's "Taiheiyo no Kiseki — Fokkusu to Yobareta Otoko (Oba: The Last Samurai)" may be based on a novel by WWII veteran Don Jones about the Japanese defense of Saipan, but the Eastwood influence is apparent, mostly for the better.