Fifteen years after redefining the Western with Unforgiven, actor-turned-Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood tackles the complexities of war in Flags of Our Fathers.

Million Dollar Baby scribe and fellow Oscar winner Paul Haggis adapted James Bradley and Ron Powers’s novel into a war film that transcends blood and gore. The movie tells the story of the iconic image of the six soldiers who raised the flag at Iwo Jima during World War II, and it’s about a battle fought far away from bullets and tanks.

The narrator of the film says in the beginning, “The right picture can win or lose a war.” That picture, taken on the fifth day of a 36-day battle, was the perfect form of propaganda to rally millions of Americans into buying bonds to pay for the war.

“[The six soldiers] felt like actors in an illusion. They did not see themselves as heroes,” explains Barry Pepper, who plays Mike Strank, one of the men who raised the flag.

In Flags, Eastwood transforms the war genre. Sure, he shows us the gory effects of battle, the virtually anonymous deaths and shootings, the opening shots of soldiers creeping into the dark, sulfur hills of Iwo Jima. But through continuous flashbacks, the audience gets a sense of the characters’ emotional turmoil.

The three soldiers the government chooses to dress up as heroes are level-headed John “Doc” Bradley, played by Ryan Phillippe (Crash), Rene Gagnon (Swimfan’s Jesse Bradford), who relishes in his fifteen minutes of fame and the troubled, alcoholic Native American marine and Ira Hayes, played by Adam Beach (Windtalkers).

All three men are swept away from the battlegrounds and thrown into the arms of millions of Americans, who see the men as the country’s saviors.

“People will be able to draw parallels [between the current war and World War II] because the themes are timeless,” explains Pepper. “The themes of propaganda will be eternal.”

Pepper insists Flags is neither pro- nor anti-war, it is just a film with a message.

“I hope the film doesn’t erode the photo’s iconic image,” Pepper says. “Instead, it is meant to represent their sacrifice. Clint never sent out to make a political film or even a war film, it is a human drama.”

Being called heroes puts pressure on the three men when they get back to the States. “All I did was try not to get shot,” Hayes cries, because he is on safe ground in America while fellow troops are still dying in the war.

“You fought for a mountain in the Pacific, now we need you to fight for a mountain of cash,” a cold Harry Truman (David Patrick Kelly) tells the three soldiers.

Eastwood shows how the government created these heroes to generate support and sympathy, and Americans needed the heroes to give them something simple to believe in amidst the moral complexities of war. Once the conflict is over, the soldiers have outlived their usefulness for both groups. One man has a hard time finding a job and another wanders around the country, homeless.

Flags brings to light how war is not about the battles, or victory or defeat, it is about the young soldiers put there to do someone else’s dirty work. Moving on for these men was never as easy as it was for the rest of the country. They will always carry their memories, like a battle wound that never heals.