Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

grantss Good depiction of the life of Ira Hamilton Hayes, the native American who was one of the six marines who famously raised the US flag on Iwo Jima in WW2. Having already seen Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers", I knew the basic story of Hayes. There is much more depth here, as Flags of Our Fathers covered the lives of three marines, not just Hayes.Plot and direction are solid. Director Delbert Mann does overdo some of the detail though, and the movie does drift occasionally. Tony Curtis is good in the lead role, though he maybe overdoes the country-bumpkin persona, making Hayes look like Forrest Gump, to a degree. It comes across as a bit patronising.

deschreiber This is the sad and touching story of Ira Hayes, with a fine acting job by Tony Curtis. Do not expect action scenes with battles and heroics. There is only a brief section that takes place on Iwo Jima;the rest is drama. Some may argue about this or that point of historical accuracy-- with good reason probably--but when all that is done, we're left with just a good drama about a young man who could not cope with the bizarre role of 'national hero' that fate forced upon him. The story is about how events outside his control affected his relationships with friends, family, his community, comrades and his country. We wish life could have turned out better for such a decent man.

HistoryFilmBuff If one didn't know the actual history one might mistake this film for the truth. And that's a shame, since a story as important as this deserves absolute truth. Worse is that the film presents itself as absolutely true, and more than a few reviews here accept that at face value.FACT: Hayes had multiple friends in his platoon, was widely liked, was friendly and outspoken. He wasn't the shy, easily intimidated pushover surrounded by indifferent or even racist soldiers.FACT: Hayes's drinking problem was sporadic, and not as devastating as shown. He was in fact a very LIGHT drinker, and thus a few drinks could get him drunk far easier a severe alcoholic could. Ironically this film's stance against racism is undercut by perpetuating a racist stereotype about Natives.And just plain strange...the film shows the friendship between Hayes and the fictional Sorenson as a thinly veiled frustrated gay relationship. That's because the screenwriter was a closeted gay man back in the days when much of society wouldn't accept that. He projected his own struggles onto Hayes, which is really bad (and confusing) filmmaking.Almost as strange...the bizarre choice of Curtis as Hayes, done up in heavy pancake makeup that makes him look almost like a drag queen at Halloween. Coupled with his "poor little me" impression of Hayes, it comes off as about as realistic as a boy scout dressed in plastic feathers giving a speech about "us poor Indians." Hayes deserved far better than this, and so does the audience. Thank God for Flags of Our Fathers finally giving the world a far more decent (and more accurate) picture.

sol (Slight Spoilers) The true and tragic story of US Marine and Native American Ira Hayes, Tony Curtis, one of the six US servicemen 5 marines and 1 navy corpsman who were depicted in the famous World War II photograph of the raising the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi during the bloody battle with the Japanese garrison on Iwo Jima. Ira was the US Marine in the far left of the photo.Very introverted and living all his life on an Arizona Indian reservation Ira felt that serving his country in wartime would bring him into the mainstream of American life by blending into it. During his boot camp training Ira made friends with the very All-American Boy looking James Sorenson, James Francisus, who became his best and lifelong, in Sorenson's case, friend. That friendship came to a sudden end on the island of Iwo Jima where Sorenson was killed by a Jap sniper and died in Ira's arms. It was during the battle of Iwo Jima that Pvt. Ira Hayes almost by accident ended up being one of the six men in the flag raising photo. In fact the original flag raising took place earlier but there was no one around to photograph it so a second, with a larger American flag, took place with Ira being in it.No one could overlook the significance of that dramatic combat photo and overnight Ira and the five other US servicemen in it became national hero's. This had the very modest, who never thought of himself as being a hero, and very non-talkative Ira Hayes immediately start to suffer from depression in being put under the microscope by the media which drove him, who until he became a US Marine never touched a drop of alcohol in his entire life, to drink. The pressure of being involved in US War Bond rallies all over the country turned Ira into a such a severe mental case that he become so afraid of meeting people, even his fellow Native Americans, that the only escape he could find from it was either in a bar or a bottle.Arrested for public drunkenness 52 times over ten years Ira finally had his last drink on January 24 1955 when he fell head first and unconscious into a drainage ditch and ended up drowning himself. In the film Ira's death was made more dramatic in him dying, after getting juiced up, in the Arizona Desert from exposer, from the bitter cold winter weather, with his hand extended like it was in the photo of him raising the flag on Mount Suribachi.Very accurate, despite it's made up ending, depiction of the life and death of Ira Hayes that turned out to be a true life, not fiction, Amerian tragedy. Ira who wanted to become a part of the American mainstream didn't realize how to act before the cameras and news reporters in him being honest about what he did on Iwo Jima. Ira never considered himself to be a hero feeling that all the hero's of the war, like his good friend James Sorenson, were already dead. With the pressures of being something that he felt he really wasn't, a full blooded American war hero, Ira slowly fell apart and the kicker was when he was't elected to the local Indian council on his reservation. Hurt and depressed in being rejected by his own people Ira let the booze, that was slowly killing him over the last 10 years, finally finish him off for good. Ira Hayes was buried at Arlington Cemetery on February 2, 1955 with the top US military brass as well as the President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower in attendance.P.S Also in the film "The Outsider" is the great Gregory Wallcott as Ira's US Marine drill instructor Sgt. Kiley. Wallcott became immortalized in Ed Wood's bad movie masterpiece "Plan 9 from Outer Space" two years earlier as the film's hero Jeff Trent. It was Jeff who ended up belting Eros, the outer space alien, for his uncalled for and nasty remark about Jeff and his fellow earthlings in telling him that "All you on Earth are Idiots"!