WRITER: Bruce C. McKenna[SPOILERS] If Band Of Brothers was the smallscreen version of Saving Private Ryan, its "sequel" The Pacific felt like The Thin Red Line. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks again collaborate on this ten-part miniseries, intending to show events following the devastating Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor that ushered the United States into WWII, and in particular the Pacific campaign. It's an area of military history many people aren't very knowledgeable about -- mainly because the European front had a more fascinating political texture that involved more nations, whereas the Pacific theatre is widely perceived as a less interesting struggle. As a series, The Pacific aims to redress this unbalance, and shed light on an era of military warfare that goes tragically overlooked.
DIRECTOR: Tim Van Patten
CAST: James Badge Dale, Joseph Mazzello, Jon Seda, William Sadler, Isabel Lucas, Penny McNamee, Cariba Heine, Jacob Pitts, Ashton Holmes, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Brendan Fletcher, Matt Craven, Nathan Corddry, Rami Malek, Matthew Dale, Damon Herriman, Grant Cartwright, Ben Esler, Joshua Close & Jon Bernthal
Once again blending reality with fiction, The Pacific wisely eschews Band Of Brothers huge ensemble to focus on three main characters: our de facto hero PFC Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), who finds himself sent to the unknown island of Guadalcanal with the 1st Marines; Sgt. John Basilone (Jon Seda), who joins the 7th Marines with his friends Sgt J.P Morgan (Joshua Biton) and Sgt Manuel Rodriguez (Jon Bernthal); and Eugene Sledge (Joseph Mazzello), a young man disappointed a heart murmur has ruled him out of the fighting, and jealous his friend Sidney Phillips (Ashton Holmes) gets to serve his country without him, assigned alongside Leckie.The Pacific didn't waste much time getting down to business (just shy of 20-minutes in fact), and this episode focused on Private Leckie's experience as part of the 1st Marines shipped to the tropical paradise of Guadalcanal in a sequence that plays on the audience's expectations of a vicious onslaught akin to D-Day's Normandy beach landings, but instead twists thing around so that the Marines instead find a deserted coast full of confused comrades. Instantly, paranoia is rife amongst the men (have the coconuts been poisoned by the Japs?), and it becomes clear that this campaign will be a world away from the cowboy shootouts of the European theatre. The enemy here are mysterious, misunderstood, stealthy (the first encounter comes in the dead of night), and victory doesn't feel assured after the Japanese destroy the American's offshore ships during a nighttime naval battle.
Hot on the heels of the Japense Empire's successful attack of Pearl Harbour, the US Marines are on foreign land they can't even pronounce, and facing an enemy practiced in guerilla tactics that were, at the time, unfamiliar to western armed forces. In one scene, a surviving Japanese soldier is pulled from a mass of bodies, only to immediately commit suicide with a hidden grenade that kills the two marines who came to his aide.
Part One covered six days and nights, although the passage of time wasn't very that noticeable because of the hourlong constraint, but it otherwise worked as a fine introduction to the miniseries -- albeit one that didn't manage to leave a huge impact in terms of character. I didn't really expect it to, as a series like this needs a few weeks for people's characters and backstories to sink in. Part One existed to drop us into this world and give us a taster of why The Pacific is a different kettle of fish when it comes to WWII conflict.
James Badge Dale made a good impression as the thoughtful, philosophic Private Leckie, who I'm sure will evolve and mature over the miniseries to become a natural leader of men. This episode ended with Leckie choosing to end a cruel "game" of taking potshots at a surviving Japanese soldier, by shooting the wounded man dead to end his torment -- thus demonstrating how his training hasn't de-humanized his responses. Leckie refuses to treat other people, even the enemy they're conditioned to hate and kill on sight, with such callous disregard. Whether that will prove to be a boon or a weakness is yet to be seen.Overall, The Pacific got off to an entertaining start that showcased the miniseries' excellent production values (a $150 million budget spread over 10 hours), although it's too early to feel connected to any of the characters just yet, and a few of the lead actors didn't get much to do -- particularly Mazzello's character Sledge, who's currently stuck at home. I'm sure it'll be a terrific viewing experience the further we get into it, probably helped by the fact common knowledge of historical events isn't as sharp as the Euro offensive, so the surprises and sense of discovery could easily, hopefully, eclipse what Band Of Brothers achieved.
Asides
-- You may recognize James Badge Dale as Jack Bauer's partner Chase from season 3, but you may not recognize Joseph Mazzello as the little boy from Jurassic Park all grown up. It was also fun to see William Sadler (Die Hard 2, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) as Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller.
-- Some wonderful sequences: the marine's leaving their ship by climbing down scramble nets into boats, as a naval battle roared around them; the tense atmosphere of the island's chirruping jungle; the bewildering battle in pitch darkness only lit by bullet tracers, and the horrendous sight of hundreds of dead bodies littering the sandy beach at daybreak.
-- Note to self: always tell armed colleagues if you're going to get up in the middle of the night to pee behind a tree.
14 MARCH 2010: HBO, 9/8c
