WRITERS: Laurence Andries & Bruce C. McKenna[SPOILERS] It's been a long time coming, but Part Five was a much healthier mix of human drama and gripping action. It helped that Private Sledge (Joseph Mazzello) finally joined the ranks, because despite the fact he's very underwritten it's always easier to relate to a wartime experience through naïve eyes. Plus, you can't help but feel anxious for someone's safety when they're clearly in over their heads.
DIRECTOR: Carl Franklin
The first half of Part Five was all about the mystique of actual war, with various inexperienced characters asking veterans "what's it like?" Basilone (Jon Seda) is safely back home, courting questions from fans he's inspired to join the military with his "Back The Attack" campaign, and dating Hollywood actress Virginia Grey (Anna Torv). Life's pretty easy for him now, but it's clear he doesn’t totally agree with the spiel he's been asked to give, particularly when he becomes concerned his brother's going to follow in his footsteps and get himself killed trying to live up to his name. It's only a matter of time before Basilone grows weary of his celebrity, which he doesn't feel he deserves anyway, and makes a return to the Pacific.
On the island of Puvavu is Sledge, who's arrived to fight the war he's been excited by, but predictably gets something of a rude awakening. The camp is full of ugly crabs, comrades aren't so accommodating, and once he's shipped off to the island of Peleliu, we're given The Pacific's most terrifying action sequences yet, in broad daylight. There was a fantastic sense of burgeoning horror with all the troops assembled in their transporter, rocked by explosions in the water beside them, hearing distant gunfire and watching fighters fly overheard. And then the transporter's doors came down, bashing them all in a euphoric light that became instead the doorway to hell, as Sledge suddenly found himself crawling across a beach under heavy shelling. Dead bodies piling up in the sand, plumes of red blood in the hot air. The simple discord of an island paradise as the scene of such atrocity really sold these scenes.
And yes, as pure entertainment, it was about time The Pacific got down to business. Four hours has been too long to wait for the action everyone was expecting from this miniseries, particularly as the previous episodes haven't really done a great job building the characters, and its brief action sequences all took place at night. Leckie's (James Badge Dale) still the only character you feel like you know, or care about to any great extent, but Sledge's "country boy" nature is inherently easy to feel protective of. He's a great audience proxy, overdue a starring turn.
Sledge's friendship with childhood buddy Sid (Ashton Holmes) was also nicely played, with the two boys briefly reunited at camp. Sid even shared a moment on the beach with Sledge, where he used the length of the island as a way to illustrate the extremes of his wartime experience: "I slept with a woman in Melbourne. I'm not bragging. That's at one end, right? And then way down there, as far as you can go, that's what it's like. And that... that you can never imagine."
Part Five also continued that underlying sense of madness that's licked the edge of the miniseries so far, especially after last week's trip to the funny farm. Here, Sledge watches in horror as a bug-eyed "Snafu" Shelton (Rami Malek) extracts a dead Japanese soldier's gold tooth with a bowie knife, which felt like another "early warning" sign of madness akin to last week's scene of a US marine strangling an injured Jap to death. Or how about granite-faced Sergeant "Gunny" (Gary Sweet) practicing lancing Japs with his bayonet, in-between talking naked showers in the rain?
It'll be interesting to see how Sledge copes with everything going on around him, as a man of Christian faith who probably has a very green view of what war would be. You have to remember that these were times when the realities of war wasn't accurately portrayed in films, newsreels, comic books or suchlike. As Basilone's story is showing us, the US military need to recruit by pushing tales of heroism and excitement of a far-flung boy's own adventure.
Overall, I hope Part Five marks the moment when The Pacific finally bursts into life, because it's been a disappointment up until now. But this episode was by far the best mix of emotions and gruelling action the miniseries has given us, with some genuinely excellent and cinematic moments for the storming of Peleliu's beach.
Asides
- You may recognize Rami Malek as a conflicted suicide bomber in the current Day 8 of 24, and of course Fringe's Anna Torv was playing Virginia Grey (a role she filmed before Fringe even aired, as The Pacific has been four years in the making!)
- I may start skipping those opening documentary featurettes, as they just give too much away about where the story's headed.
- The movie the troops were watching to pass the time was For Whom The Bell Tolls, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper.
