Every soldier's story follows an arc from bright dreams of glory into shadows of chaos - to a place where illusion is stripped away, leaving only the rawest elements of character and instinct to scrape against each other.

Combat drama, at its best, threads its way along this same path, pushing our imaginations past adolescent fantasy, towards a glimpse of life at the edge of annihilation. We see something of what soldiers know: what lies at a person's core and the simple desires they cling to when everything is lost.

Clint Eastwood's excellent World War II drama, "Letter's From Iwo Jima," re-tells the famous battle from the Japanese point of view. It is, of course, the companion film to "Flags of Our Fathers" and a remarkable mirror image to America's hard-won victory - a brutal defeat where of the 22,000 Japanese defenders less than 300 survived.

"Letters" opens with a young Japanese soldier, Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) digging defenses in the hot, dusty shoreline of the island. Saigo, a draftee, was never an enthusiastic proponent of the war and his grumbling gets him a beating that is halted by his new commander, General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe).

Eastwood uses these two men to bring the larger historical forces down to a personal level. The battle for Iwo Jima was part of a sea change in the fortunes of the war. Japan's imperial ambitions were crumbling and these soldiers now stood in the path of the overwhelming power of the United States.

Saigo and General Kuribayashi are about to be caught between a battle they cannot win and a culture that has no provisions for surrender.

For a battle that produced such widespread carnage, Eastwood keeps his camera tightly focused, following small groups of men as they fight from the mouths of caves or make desperate dashes across open ground. He creates of series of character studies, exploring what a man will do when hope is completely taken away or when a cultural imperative of death before dishonor comes face to face with a visceral desire to survive.

Watanabe plays General Kuribayashi with a deeply ingrained sense of decency. Educated and principled, he has been to America and likes Americans; he also has the clearest picture of how hopeless his situation is. But for Kuribayashi obligation trumps all else and he is willing to surrender his personal desires, and his life, to his sense of duty.

Saigo isn't so much Kuribayashi's opposite as his compliment. He also has a deep vein of integrity but it has nothing to do with duty. He's made a promise to come home to his wife and daughter and wants desperately to keep it. He makes his way through the warren of caves searching for a glimpse of hope and survival. Ninomiya gives Saigo a boyish openness. He's not completely formed as a man nor shaped by his society. There is a willfulness to Saigo that becomes the film's heartbeat and, in the end; he carries our hopes along with his own.

Eastwood intertwines the lives of Kuribayashi and Saigo. Saigo keeps running afoul of his superiors and more than once Kuribayashi steps in to rescue him. Together they bookend Eastwood's story, two men sharing a common strength of character but making very different choices.

Like the best of combat films, "Letters" is as much a psychological drama as an action picture and its story is gripping whether guns are firing or not.

Conceived as an add-on to "Flags of Our Fathers", "Letters From Iwo Jima" managed to out perform it on the awards circuit. This story about men who were our enemies seems to have struck a more universal chord.

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Rated: R

(Four stars)

Bruce Bulloch may be reached via wseditor@robinsonnews.com