MORE than 50 years after he first appeared in Hollywood as a bright young Republican, Clint Eastwood has been attacked by his old allies as a bleeding heart liberal for his latest film, Flags of Our Fathers.

The £40m film, which opened in 1,800 cinemas in America this weekend, focuses not only on the second world war battle of Iwo Jima but also on the fate of a native American soldier who, Eastwood suggests, was maltreated by the military after the Pacific campaign.

Flags of Our Fathers, which stars the Billy Elliot actor Jamie Bell and will be released in Britain in December, tells the grim story of the month-long battle early in 1945 in which nearly 30,000 soldiers died.

Eastwood, 76, follows the six soldiers who raised the Stars and Stripes over the small volcanic island, a moment captured in the famous photograph.

BACKGROUND

• Flags of our Fathers

• Letter from Iwo Jima

• The unheroic face of war

• Eastwood war film 'waves flag of bleeding hearts'

• Clint Eastwood

Ken is Clint's main man

Letters from Iwo Jima looks like becoming the main attraction

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The three soldiers who survived the campaign were regarded as heroes. The US military organised public tours for them, but one, Ira Hayes, was not allowed to stay with the other two because he was a Pima Indian from Arizona. He became an alcoholic and died in mysterious circumstances 10 years later, which relatives attributed to despair at his racist treatment.

In 1993, at a ceremony on Iwo Jima, General Carl Mundy apologised on behalf of soldiers “who might have given the impression that some marines were not as capable as others because of the colour of their skin”.

While most American critics have praised the film, calling it the best war film since Saving Private Ryan, others have protested against a supposedly liberal bias in the script.

Scott Holleran, writing for Box Office Mojo, said: “Flags unfolds as though it discovers something awful about the United States, making the middle classes look idiotic and racist and suggesting the nation that defeated Japan did so purely by accident.”

William Bemister, a radio commentator, said he felt that Eastwood, formerly a close ally of President Ronald Reagan, had turned in recent years from “the Man with No Name to the Man with the Bleeding Heart”.

He said he could not wait for Flag’s forthcoming companion film, Letters from Iwo Jima, which shows the battle from the Japanese point of view, which he is sure “will be stuffed with US atrocities, even those that extreme left-wing historians have failed to unearth”.

Eastwood describes himself as a “libertarian of no party”. Observers suspect his once ruggedly Republican views have mellowed under the influence of his second wife, Dina Ruiz, who works for Mexican immigrant causes.

Eastwood, who built his reputation as a man of few words, has started talking about himself, and recently even spoke about his mother, once a taboo subject.

“My mother used to say, ‘You have a little angel on your shoulder’,” he recalled. “The best I can do is quote a line from my movie Unforgiven, where one character says, ‘Deserve’s got nothing to do with it’.”

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