Starring Ryan Phillippe, Barry Pepper, and Jesse Bradford. Rated 18A.

Some of the most famous moments of the Second World War were actually faked. The stirring Churchillian phrases that all of us believe we have heard with our own ears were, for the most part, passed down to posterity by a BBC voice double after the British prime minister had intoned the originals in the House of Commons. In similar fashion, the notorious jig that Hitler allegedly danced upon hearing of the fall of France was actually created in our National Film Board’s editing rooms by looping a slapped thigh to a stomped foot.

And as for the raising of the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi, well that was a staged media event if ever there was one.

In Flags of Our Fathers, it is the unreality of this phenomenon that takes precedence over everything, including the battle of Iwo Jima itself. The relatively small number of combat scenes that do appear in Clint Eastwood’s latest feature usually appear in flashbacks that emphasize the posttraumatic stress disorder experienced by the two marines and one navy corpsman who are showboated around the United States in order to sell war bonds and thereby finance Uncle Sam’s final campaign against Imperial Japan.

This approach is in line with the movie’s overall outlook: pro-veteran, anti-politician, and extremely ambivalent about the significance of war.

Based on the nonfiction bestseller by James Bradley and Ron Powers and coscripted by superstar scenarist Paul Haggis, Flags of Our Fathers frequently seems—there’s no nicer way to put this—disjointed. No sooner do we become involved in a suicidal Marine attack on a machinegun-infested South Pacific slope than we find ourselves wafted back to a ballroom in Chicago where the survivors of the alleged flag-raising reluctantly try to open civilian wallets.

Even worse, many of the “facts” conveyed by this movie are of questionable authenticity. It seems unlikely, for instance, that “the Arabs [would] only accept bullion” for oil, since most petroleum fields were then under British control. And why would Washington care about this, anyway, one wonders, given that America was largely self-sufficient in energy throughout the 1940s? Contextually, it seems just another ploy to overemphasize the purported exhaustion of the U.S. Treasury.

Even the reasons behind the “double” raising of the flag seem to have been fudged. Most historians claim that the first banner was too small to photograph well; Eastwood’s movie argues that an American general simply wanted it as a trophy.

All this means that Flags of Our Fathers is, at best, only a partial success. This said, there is no denying that the film does demonstrate a quiet dignity throughout, as well as occasional moments of muted but powerful emotion. And then there’s Adam Beach’s interpretation of Ira Hayes, the Apache flag raiser with a tragic future yawning ahead of him. This performance should win Beach a best supporting actor Oscar (although it probably won’t).

As for the film’s seeming awkwardness, maybe even that will resolve itself when Eastwood finishes Letters From Iwo Jima, the second half of his cinematic diptych that will try to show both sides of a struggle that killed or wounded almost 50,000 men.

Only in 2007 will we really be able to judge.