Instead of showing us the differences between the three men, Eastwood chooses to illustrate how much they were alike and, more importantly, how much they resemble you and me.

The whole is a more satisfactory entity than Flags of Our Fathers - and the final scene, which has veterans and relatives scouring the tunnels and caves for the buried letters, is a suitably moving coda.

Eastwood and his cinematographer Tom Stern have done a superb and possibly unique job in showing both sides of this dreadful battle, and the pair of films together already look monumental.

It’s almost a mirror to 'Flags of Our Fathers,' putting the audience into the suffocating caves with the [Japanese] soldiers and officers of a doomed army charged with fighting to the death and certain defeat.