REVIEW: HBO's 'The Pacific'

Miniseries Engenders Debate, Draws Comparisons With 'Band Of Brothers'

By Mark Robichaux -- Multichannel News, 3/8/2010 7:53:00 AM

In his voyage to the Pacific after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Eugene B. Sledge wonders: “Would I do my duty or be a coward? Could I kill?"
HBO’s upcoming 10-part miniseries The Pacific answers that question, revealing the toll on this shy teenage son of an Alabama doctor as he became a hardened fighter of the 1st Marine Division, 3rd battallion, 5th Marines. Viewers won’t be disappointed.
Fans of HBO’s highly successful Band of Brothers will make comparisons, and there will be endless debate over which is better. The opening score of strings and horns, combined with fierce charcoal sketching, is elegantly and artfully rendered. The acting, largely by unknowns, is exceptional, and the powerful battle scenes a la Saving Private Ryan will no doubt leave home-theater owners crouching white-knuckled in their recliners.
Unlike Band, which followed a single group of Army paratroopers in Europe throughout training and combat, in Pacific, we’re following three disparate characters whose narratives intersect tangentially. For me, it took longer to build up sympathy. It’s when the series zeros in on Sledge’s experience that it really picks up.
When young Sledge declares he’s enlisting, his father tries to explain his objection with his own experience as a doctor during the first World War: “The worst thing wasn’t they had their flesh torn out, it was they had their souls torn out. I don’t want to look in your eyes one day and see no spark, no love, no life.”
Another big difference to Band, which follows the campaign in Europe, is the absolutely hellish conditions on the Pacific islands. There, the outnumbered Marines fight some of the fiercest, bloodiest battles of the war, including Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and on the tiny speck of coral known as Peleliu. Warning: high body count, mostly Japanese.
But there was a more pervasive enemy, too. As Leckie says during another downpour, ”Now our enemy is the jungle itself. ” Uniforms and boots literally rot from their bodies. And flies, dysentery, malaria, rats and crabs made conditions unbearable for the Marines in the Pacific, especially as mortar shells rained downed and bullets whizzed overhead.
In more scenes than not, viewers can’t help feel profound gratitude for the deaths of freedom’s defenders on tiny islands a world away.

The Pacific premieres Sunday March 14 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) on HBO.