HBO’s ‘The Pacific’ miniseries captured seven Emmy awards recently, and this is my 100th review. Helmed and produced by the same team that created ‘Band of Brothers’; the Pacific is an ambitious telling of some of the key island-hopping campaigns of the Second World War. With an eye… More
HBO’s ‘The Pacific’ miniseries captured seven Emmy awards recently, and this is my 100th review. Helmed and produced by the same team that created ‘Band of Brothers’; the Pacific is an ambitious telling of some of the key island-hopping campaigns of the Second World War. With an eye for accuracy and detail, the production team perfectly captures the horrible, bloody mess the island campaigns were. Since it focuses largely on the stories of four Marines, the episodes are presented in a slightly different fashion that BoB, in that it gives no sweeping ‘Invasion of Europe’ overview, but instead captures the mud-level view of the common Marine.
It’s not as well liked as Band of Brothers: The reasons are clear. Most people have been raised on a steady diet of the romanticism of warfare, mostly as depicted in the invasion of Europe, and the bloody mess of the island campaigns isn’t well known. In the Pacific, that romanticism belonged to the naval pilots and carrier battles that were all part of the war. So it’s easy to see why it was less well-received by people that liked Band of Brothers: Nobody likes to see people broken by war, and unclear objectives, and often chaos: That’s truth. Another truth is that The Pacific does what few series have ever done – take you there, and fill you with the same dread. You OUGHT to recoil from watching it. Pitted against the dedicated and implacable Japanese forces, these are young men for whom there’s no real escape: The marines and Army units engaged in reducing Japanese outposts had nothing but mud, malaria, and misery to compound their boredom.
The soldiers depicted are just some of the many stories but they give an interesting cross-section of the US forces. The casting is once again superb at all levels, and their ordeals are about as close as I ever want to come to a war like that. The action wavers between extremely intense bursts of violence and long period of either tedium or paranoia. You find yourself questioning why some of these battles were fought at all, and three episodes deal with Pelelieu, a pyrrhic and ultimately useless victory. However, these are stories that need to be told, and HBO and Spielberg’s team with Hanks, McKenna, and the rest of the technical folks do an outstanding job at all levels. You really come to understand why veterans of that conflict don’t talk about anything but the chow and their buddies. That’s really all that was even halfway good.
It will give you an appreciation for what that generation did, and even more appreciation for the sacrifices our current generation have made around the world in their own service to their country. This series and Band of Brothers makes many half-assed films about ‘heroes’ with guns look like the hollow fakes that they are. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re into history, or just want a better understanding of history presented in a high-quality way, The Pacific is worth watching. You can also read the companion book for the series, which also follows two more participants in the Pacific campaign that aren’t in the series.
Recommended