Dirty Harry goes P.C.: Clint Eastwood's empathy with doomed Japanese soldiers whitewashes their barbaric warmaking.(MEDIA)

AMONG FILM CRITICS, THERE seems to be a longing for a filmmaker who can assume the mantle of American master. And for many of them, Clint Eastwood is just the man. Choosing Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima as the best movie of 2006, The New York Times' A.O. Scott wrote that with the death of Robert Altman, Eastwood became the greatest living American filmmaker. That's a depressing prospect: It's as if, with Altman's maverick crapshoot approach to filmmaking out of the way, American movies can return to the static genre familiarity that his films made look unutterably square.

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