The man in charge of 'Iwo Jima'

When filming for "Letters From Iwo Jima" wrapped on that historic island in the Pacific, the movie's star, Ken Watanabe, scaled its dormant volcano with American members of the movie's crew. The group prayed at the cemetery atop Mt. Suribachi, which memorializes the Japanese soldiers who perished in the crucial World War II battle. Then crew members handed him two flags -- the Stars and Stripes and Japan's rising sun -- and snapped his photo.

The picture was a telling update of the famous World War II photograph that became a symbol of American patriotism -- the portrait of American soldiers planting a U.S. flag in the soil of Japan's defeat. "I was so impressed that the American crew completely understood how the Japanese soldiers felt," Watanabe said during a recent swing through Los Angeles to promote director Clint Eastwood's critically esteemed companion film to "Flags of Our Fathers." "It's a collaboration. That was meaningful for me."

Indeed, the artistic collaboration between former enemy sides on the latter of Eastwood's movies examining America's and Japan's respective experiences during the battle of Iwo Jima, in 1945, is one of the more pleasant surprises of globalization. Opening wide Feb. 9, "Letters" already is winning best film plaudits from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures as well as a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign-language picture. And the elegant Watanabe, who has homes in Tokyo and Los Angeles, is one of the brave new globalized world's more dashing sons.

Indeed, he won the official imprimatur of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" arbiters after he grabbed Hollywood's attention with his Oscar-nominated performance in 2003's "The Last Samurai." Watanabe followed that two years later with the role of the Chairman in "Memoirs of a Geisha," prompting one besotted critic to call him "a majestic hunk."

Eastwood prefers to characterize the 47-year-old actor's charisma as "screen presence" and says he was impressed with Watanabe when he met him at the Oscars a few years ago. "Besides being a terrific actor, he's got a really great face," Eastwood says. "His face just jumps off the screen. He's almost the heir to [Toshiro] Mifune, and I've always liked him and admired him in the few things I'd seen him in."