RYAN PHILLIPPE PREPARED FOR BATTLE MEDIC

(VIDEO) Ryan Phillippe practiced medical dressings to prepare for battlefield medic in Flags of our Fathers.

Ryan Phillippe stars as John ‘Doc’ Bradley the real life battlefield medic who saved thousands of lives during the war at Iwo Jima in Flags of Our Fathers. The screenplay is based on a novel written by Doc’s son James from whom Ryan had the privilege of learning about his father’s heroism first hand. Ryan also did plenty of homework on medical dressings enlisting a male dummy from the props department.

Director Clint Eastwood’s methods are to get the scene in one take and he wants his actors to be in the moment so there was no pre Hollywood boot camp for the actors to experience. Ryan says being on the battlefield set felt real enough.

“The biggest challenge for me was learning the medical procedures I had to sort of be familiar with as a corpsman and learn how to do tourniquets and pressure bandages and slings. I can make a sling out of anything. Now I could apply that knowledge. I really could do most first aid. I could respond to most first aid problems.”

Ryan felt privileged to honor his own grandfather who fought in World War II and to experience war on such a grand scale even though it is only a movie.

“After we would run 30 yards across the battlefield there was so much going on and gunfire, literally 200 guns firing at once. Yeah your adrenaline and your emotion is kicked in just in the ambience sense, you can’t help but be affected by that environment.”

Flags of Our Fathers is currently playing in theatersrn

“You watch a lot of war movies growing up especially when you love film. You play war and to do it on such a grand scale as this and to be able to look over and see Clint Eastwood in fatigues commanding you, it couldn’t be a better experience.”