THE PACIFIC: Part Nine & Ten

WRITERS: Bruce C. McKenna (Part 9 & 10) & Robert Schenkkan (Part 10)
DIRECTORS: Tim Van Patten (Part 9) & Jeremy Podeswa (Part 10)

[SPOILERS] I fell behind with The Pacific because it's not lived up to my expectations, and I struggled to muster enthusiasm to watch Part Nine until recently, but I'm glad I did because Part Nine was one of the miniseries' better installments. A gritty, nightmarish hour of warfare in Okinawa, a combat zone that became infamous for the high numbers of US and civilian casualties...

Here we saw Sledge (Joseph Mazzello) at his lowest ebb because he's lived amongst such atrocity and relentless discomfort for so long (falling into a muddy pit containing a maggoty corpse, or surviving a mother-and-baby suicide bomber), but a moment of tenderness for a dying woman in a hut helped pull him back from the brink of insanity. Likewise, already-crazy Snafu (Rami Malik) appeared to rediscover his humanity in this most awful of places, before the marines were pulled out of the horror thanks to an off-screen attack on Nagasaki that vaporized the entire city.

It was an entertaining hour that definitely highlighted the predictable change in Sledge from skinny country boy to "wise" pipe-smoking veteran -- with Gunny's lighter (his "torch") duly passed. The issues I have are more generalizations for The Pacific as a whole; the fact it's been such an infuriating mish-mash of battles, characters and events. It's not so much telling a story as throwing a lot of moments at you, and some episodes contain enough "hits" to be considered a success. I think the main problem is that The Pacific campaign isn't ideal material for a miniseries intending to give you a broad overview, and the passage of time has been difficult to gauge. Has a year passed since Part One? A few months? Actually, Part Ten confirmed it's been three years. Three. YEARS. So why did it feel like a really bad summer, at the most?

Also, too much has felt rushed or ignored and it's been unclear who we were supposed to be following: Leckie appeared to be the lead, but then vanished halfway through; Basilone never felt like a lead but his character kept on being returned to, before he almost accidentally starred in the best hour; while Sledge has been the most consistent presence and ultimately the most normal person the audience can identify with. The intention was to give us three leads, actually, but The Pacific never managed to make its triptych work.

Part Ten was an emotionally satisfying episode, as all the characters returned home after the Japanese surrender. Leckie (James Badge Dale) goes back to sports journalism, discovering that he can use his "celebrity" to haggle a pay rise and woo Vera, the girl who lives across the street, with his fancy uniform and maturity. Vera's who he was writing all those letters to, which he didn't actually get to send. That was probably for the best, given how morbid they were. A shame we never knew Vera before Leckie went off to war, as the actors had good chemistry. The point to this vignette was to show Leckie trying to busy himself with other things, rather than face his memories. Is it possible his experiences have made him doubt the existence of God, too? There was a family dinner scene where everyone closed their eyes to say grace in prayer, but Leckie would rather hold Vera's hand under the table and stare into her eyes.

The most interesting and developed story belonged to Sledge, who arrived home and found it difficult to adjust to normality: at a recruitment fair he realized he's gained no useful skills while in the Marine Corp (beyond "killing Japs"), social events felt uncomfortable, he had difficult sleeping because of nightmares, he's kept his pipe-smoking habit, and a shooting trip with his father caused him to have a panic attack at the thought of firing a gun. Indeed, Sledge decided he never wants to wear his uniform again. The only person who truly understood was his childhood friend Sid (Ashton Holmes), who's had time to adjust to civilian life since returning from the Pacific himself.

Finally, Basilone's widow Lena (Annie Parisse) visited her husband's grieving family -- an awkward way to meet your in-laws for the first time, but she soon made a breakthrough by handing over Basilone's Medal Of Honour to this father. Rather frustratingly, her husband never signed insurance papers, meaning she'll receive no financial support for her loss.

One interesting element of Part Ten (which also highlighted a problem I've had with the series) was the extended credits sequence, where the real people behind these stories were shown, and their post-WWII lives encapsulated in short paragraphs. It was a poignant reminder that these were real people and interesting to note the details of what happened to them all (Snafu didn't speak to any of his comrades for three decades until he read Sledge's war memoir, for instance.) But was I alone in not recognizing the names/faces of most people shown? The Pacific did a decent job at keeping Leckie, Sledge and Basilone in your memory, but nearly everyone else melted into the background for me. This tends to happen with ensemble war dramas, but was a particular problem for The Pacific because it so obviously wanted you to only attach yourself to three leads, and the story was so fractured.

Overall, The Pacific definitely improved from Part 6 onwards and contained three or four genuinely good episodes in its run, but it was obvious this miniseries was more style over substance. I couldn't identify with and didn't particularly like any of the characters apart from Sledge, and the way the series would jump around in time and location was often confusing. Unlike Band Of Brothers (which it will always be compared to), the lack of a simple men-on-a-mission storyline with a clearly defined goal definitely hurt the serialized storytelling. The Pacific campaign just isn't as amenable to a dramatic retelling like this (unless you concentrate on one particular battle), but this ten-part miniseries wanted to encompass far too much. In so doing, it bit off more than it could chew, but at least it succeeded in bringing this lesser known aspect of WWII to wider attention.

24 & 31 MAY 2010: SKY MOVIES PREMIERE/HD, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Eight

WRITERS: Robert Schenkkan & Michelle Ashford
DIRECTORS: David Nutter & Jeremy Podeswa

[SPOILERS] In one hour, Part Eight achieved everything I wanted from The Pacific as a ten-part miniseries. Fun training sequences, a relatable performance from its lead (Jon Seda), engaging romance, beautiful visuals, brutal action, and a genuinely emotive climax. This miniseries still ranks as a disappointment to me because of its thin characterization and choppy narrative, but it's certainly started to reverse a decline since Part 6, so I'm hopeful the last two episodes will maintain this quality...

Sgt Basilone (Seda) has been a curious presence; initially one of the supposed lead characters, he was sent back home after his Guadalcanal heroics to be a spokesman for the US Army's spin doctors. A handsome face with a gripping tale of slaughtering "Japs" who could increase conscription numbers, he's floated in and out of the narrative, giving us one of The Pacific's more unique elements; a soldier awarded the Medal Of Honor who doesn't like how that's turned him into a household name. A born marine eager to serve his country, Basilone's instead spent a year of wartime making dinner speeches, bedding famous actresses, and acting (badly) in radio plays.

That all changed here, with Basilone renewing his determination to return to active duty and being rewarded with a transfer to train new recruits. A job that began in earnest with just two star-struck privates to shout at as they tackled the grueling obstacle course.

More importantly to the story, Basilone fell in love with beautiful Lena Riggi (Annie Parisse) after seeing her across the mess hall, although his amorous advances weren't reciprocated for awhile because Riggi was cautious about bedding a celebrity she suspects isn't genuinely interested in her as a person. But, after bonding over a shared opinion of their duties and a sense of commitment to the military lifestyle, Riggi started to lower her defenses and accepted Basilone into her life. In fact, after a whirlwind romance that included a beach scene straight out of From Here To Eternity, they quickly got married when it became clear time was short and Basilone would soon be leaving for Iwo Jima.

From there, a devastating cut to a very different beach: Iwo Jima, where we found Basilone accompanying his men in a truly horrifying D-Day assault. The Pacific appears to be delivering more harrowing war sequences with every episode, and so far this ranks as the most frightening -- with soldiers being shot to pieces everywhere you look as black dirt was kicked into the air, almost as if the marines were stuck in a hellish pit of ash. At times it was impossible to imagine anyone would survive the Japanese artillery laying waste to dozens of people every few seconds.

And, cruelly, this was the moment when Sgt Basilone's luck would run out, just when he had something worth living for, as he was shot down by enemy fire and collapsed to the ground, his death throes captured in slow-motion, with his shocked cadets watching on and unable to help. For the men he trained, his death wasn't just the demise of a mentor and a respected soldier, but of a legend. Someone they'd come to view as an indestructible vanquisher of the enemy, but now just one of many men littering Iwo Jima's shoreline. Basilone's last life lesson: death doesn't discriminate.

Overall, Part Eight was definitely the best episode of The Pacific yet, even if it often dealt in romanticized clichés. The fact Basilone was a real person also gave his character added weight, and this episode just did a much better job at balancing character with story. Basilone and Riggi's romance was more believable than the sappy nonsense of Leckie's love-story in Melbourne, and telling a story that felt contained yet connected to the series at large made it more satisfying as an hour of TV . It also featured the first death of the miniseries that actually took a toll.

17 MAY 2010: SKY MOVIES PREMIERE/HD, 9PM

No love for Glee and The Pacific?

I've noticed a lack of comments for reviews of Glee and The Pacific. Are those shows nobody here is watching, or cares about? Glee was one of the most active reviews when it started on E4 earlier this year, but now the UK's closer to the US broadcast the comments have nearly dried up. A little strange! Has Glee's bubble burst? Is there nothing fresh to say about each episode now? Or have potential commenters exhausted giving their opinion by the time E4 catch-up to Fox? A lot of Glee's earlier comments here appeared to stem from Americans while the show was on hiatus in the US, so maybe that has something to do with it?

The lack of response to The Pacific is perhaps easier to explain; it's on subscription-only HBO and Sky Movies on both sides of the pond, so viewership's a lot lower. I guess a lot of people will just grab the box-set later. Most comments the show got over its opening episodes were largely negative, so perhaps people just gave up early? Or possibly everyone's following US-pace and are ahead of my "outdated" reviews? A peril of deciding whether to follow US or UK pace with TV shows, that I've encountered many times before.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear why the response to those shows has been so muted in recent weeks, if you care to share.

THE PACIFIC: Part Seven

WRITER: Bruce C. McKenna
DIRECTOR: Tim Van Patten

[SPOILERS] HBO's miniseries is beginning to deliver a depiction of war in all its harrowing, exciting, gruesome and frightening extremes. It's frustrating that The Pacific has waited this long to give audiences what they were primed for -- and I still have no idea why they did a "shore leave" episode so prematurely -- but Part Seven certainly helped redress an imbalance.

The carnage at Peleliu continues for a full hour this week, as tired troops march in and out of combat on constant rotation, fighting wily Japs hiding in hundreds of hillside caves and bunkers. It was slow, dangerous and tense work for the marines trying to inch themselves further into enemy territory over tough terrain, and the sense of a living nightmare rested heavy on Sledge's (Joseph Mazzello) young soul, where cigarettes are now his only source of comfort and his trusted Bible has become a means to mark-off the days like a prisoner.

Mazzello gave a better performance this week as Sledge, in-between all his middle-distance staring. He heeded the advice of Captain Haldane (Scott Gibson) in not "dwelling" on the horror he sees, passed on that pearl of wisdom to a comrade, and broke down in tears when Haldane (something of a mentor) was killed off-screen and stretchered past. I particularly loved the moment when Sledge noticed Snafu (Rami Malek) plopping stones into a dead Japanese soldier's skull, cracked open like a boiled egg, and while horrified by the macabre sight he decided to join in by trying to steal a corpse's gold teeth. Interestingly, Snafu was the one who convinced Sledge not to go through with the grisly theft, perhaps knowing it's a slippery slope from stealing teeth to throwing stones into skulls, and doesn't want Sledge to follow him down that particular path.

Overall, I'm still not completely sold on the characters (a few die and it still means nothing because we don't know them very well), and the action scenes are impressive but nothing we haven't seen before, or have seen done better. Still, in respect of what's come before on The Pacific, Part Seven was a more satisfying hour of action and the story did the best job yet of making you feel the physical exhaustion and mental toll war has on young men sent into killing zones.

10 MAY 2010: SKY MOVIES PREMIERE/HD, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Six

WRITERS: Bruce C. McKenna, Laurence Andries & Robert Schenkkan
DIRECTOR: Tony To

[SPOILERS] War changes people; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sledge (Joe Mazzello) was a religious country boy dreaming of war, and now he's realizing war's not fun it's terrifying, has taken up smoking, and has earned himself the macho nickname "Sledgehammer" (a moniker to live up to?) It really helps that Sledge is such a plain-faced everyman, because he's a blank slate we can project on as an audience, which helps you feel closer to the drama. The Pacific's done a poor job with its characters in my estimation, but thankfully a few are starting to stand out from the pack at last.

The assault on Peleliu's airstrip was the focus of Part Six, which gave us more of the gritty action that ended Part Five. It's the shot of adrenaline this miniseries needed, because now the characters are being shaped in the fires of war, and that's just more entertaining to see unfold. I'm still disappointed by how The Pacific's drama doesn't click with the prologues of archive footage, though. This week, the preface setup the idea that this mission was undertaken in sweltering heat with no drinking water. In the actual hour's drama, the lack of water may have been mentioned a lot, but I never got the sense that everyone was all that thirsty (where were the cracked lips?) and the sense of humidity was missing. A few scenes of heat haze across the landscape may have helped, or dripping sweat from the troops.

More characters came into sharper focus this week, which was good to see: from "Snafu" (Rami Malek), the disquieting marine we met stealing gold teeth from a Japanese corpse, who actually felt more human in his interaction with buddy Sledge; grizzled Sgt "Gunny" Haney (Gary Sweet) was back playing the kind of alpha male the marines now find amusing behind his back; and Captain Haldane (Scott Gibson), the sort of decent leader you need to keep morale up, who's prepared to do anything to make sure his men get through this nightmare.

The action sequences were good, if nothing remarkable. It still puzzles me that the price-tag of this miniseries is a stratospheric $150m, but I can only assume they're saving the bulk of that cash for the final run of episodes. It's also unfortunate that CGI has become so commonplace in war drama's, because there's a glaze of artificiality to sequences nowadays. Whenever there are scenes involving ships and water it's particularly obvious how much just exists in a digital space, which distances you from the reality. Some of the CGI has been used very well in The Pacific, but there are regular lapses that make my eyes roll. Again, with a budget of approx. $20m per episode, that's disappointing.

Overall, Part Six was definitely a strong episode that offered more entertainment than usual, and I'm glad the characters are beginning to take shape. The moment when a marine started screaming from a nightmare and had to be killed to stop him giving away their position was a grim reminder of how far people will go to keep the majority safe, too. Leckie (James Badge Dale) was less integral than usual, but after heroically recovering a radio he found himself badly injured and taken to a medical ship to recover, reacquainted with "Runner" Conley (Keith Nobbs), the soldier who nicknamed him "Peaches". I realize the show is half-based on fact, but I sure hope Part Seven doesn't again slam on the brakes with an episode set aboard the floating hospital. I think it's about time The Pacific got down to business after half a season of teasing.

Asides

• It's notable how little we've seen of the Japanese on-screen. I guess it's intentional, but it's a little strange to me. The only Japanese faces we've had a good look at are either injured and dying or already dead.
• Also interesting to see Sid return to the Sledge family home to assure them their son Eugene will be fine, as he was clearly lying and doesn't think a sweet boy like Eugene will last a day. I wonder what the Sledge's will make of their boy when he, hopefully, returns home from war. I don't think he'll be quite the same kid anymore.

3 MAY 2010: SKY MOVIES PREMIERE/HD, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Five

WRITERS: Laurence Andries & Bruce C. McKenna
DIRECTOR: Carl Franklin

[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.

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.

26 APRIL 2010: SKY PREMIERE/HD, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Four

WRITERS: Robert Schenkkan & Graham Yost
DIRECTOR: Graham Yost

[SPOILERS] The best episode so far, but still one that caused me to question my commitment to The Pacific, which has so far failed to grab me on any level. It's beginning to puzzle me that the budget for this miniseries is a stratospheric $150m, as so little appears to be up on-screen. Also, if you watch a war drama you want two things: "war" and "drama". And so far there's been very little of either that's felt estimable, and certainly nothing to rival its spiritual predecessor Band Of Brothers...

This week, we went through the battle of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, which again featured a disorientating night fight against some Japanese soldiers. I know you can't rewrite history, but it's beginning to irritate me that we haven't had a truly comprehensible battle in daylight in four hours of television. The first half of Part Four earned points for a few nicely delivered scenes, at leasr: a crazy US marine throttling an injured Jap in front of his horrified comrades, and Leckie (James Badge Dale) witnessing a French soldier's suicide. Oh yes, cowardly French allies and a Japanese enemy that amounts to wary-crying shadows that just get gunned down, that's the level we're writing at.

The passage of time is also still a problem for me. We're given month and year legends on-screen, thankfully, but little sense that weeks are actually passing. You sometimes wonder why everyone's so dispirited by a few days of rain, when I guess weeks and perhaps months have passed living in those conditions, but there's just no sense of time to how the stories unfold. Did the battle of Cape Gloucester last three days, three weeks, or three months? I have no idea. And was it really much of a battle? A few skirmishes in the night was all I saw.

Moving on to the island of Pavuvu, Leckie disintegrates mentally, not helped by the fact he's suffering from enuresis (an inability to control his bladder) and is constantly wetting himself. This social embarrassment, the bad weather and near-constant state of alerteness takes its toll and Leckie is sent for medical treatment in a military "funny farm". There he trades quips with a mild-mannered shrink and meets Gibson (Tom Budge), a comrade who's been deemed insane after trying to kill himself while on duty. Gibson's the crazy marine Leckie saw strangling that Japanese soldier on New Britain, but I only realized that in conversation with a friend afterwards, such highlights the problem trying to remember faces and names on a show like this.

Part Four was definitely better than its preceding hours because there were more layers to its story, but I still find that nothing's hitting me emotionally. Battles are being fought that I don't have any investment in (indeed, I'm often surprised they're considered important enough to have names!), no characters beyond Leckie have been developed to any significant degree, the passing of time isn't being felt dramatically (would it hurt to put a few "X Days Later" legends up?), and I haven't been all that impressed by any of the action sequences. That said, hyphenate Graham Yost (Speed, Justified) has done the best job of any of his peers so far.

Overall, maybe I'm being too hard on The Pacific, or my expectations need lowering, but I don’t think the creators have approached the material the right way. The Pacific campaign is undeniably more fractured and less accessible to a traditional narrative than the European theatre was, but even allowing for that these episodes have been thin on characterisation and lack exciting plots. There are a modicum of interesting moments and amusing dialogue in every hour, with perhaps a few minutes of diverting battle if you're lucky, but not much else. The buzz was huge for this show, and I've read some very positive reviews, but I'm just not feeling it.

Asides

• Leckie's writing very strange, depressing letters to Vera, isn’t he? A sign of his madness, or is he just too honest for his own good? Incidentally, I wish we cared about Vera, but I forget if we've ever even met her now. It would have been better if he was writing to the Greek girl he fell in love with last week, don't you think? At least we can picture her face.
• It's been many years since I saw Band Of Brothers, but were the German soldiers just faceless bullet-fodder as The Pacific's Japanese are?
• I'm thinking of fast-forwarding through the opening documentary featurettes now, because each one just spoils the gist of what the drama's going to tackle. And it's crazy that it takes 7 minutes for the episode to actually start, after the featurette and protracted opening titles.
• I was led to believe this miniseries would focus on Leckie, Basilone and Sledge, but with Basilone sent home and Sledge still in training, was that a wise creative decision? It's given the show a very disorderly feel, as I'm sure there are people who don't even realize Sledge and Basilone are so important. After four hours, Leckie's benefitted the most from the attention, but I wish more of his fellow marines had been developed. What's so wrong with just focusing on, say, five characters in Leckie's platoon, and following them through various battles?

19 APRIL 2010: SKY MOVIES PREMIERE, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Three

WRITERS: George Pelecanos & Michelle Ashford
DIRECTOR: Jeremy Podeswa

[SPOILERS] A squealing change of pace, as the beleaguered marines are shipped from hellhole Guadalcanal and dropped in Melbourne, southern Australia, occupying a cricket stadium as a makeshift billet. Understandably, many of the men take the opportunity to go AWOL, slipping by Military Police and hitting the town to drink themselves silly in the pubs and, in a few cases, find love with the local girls...

Of prime focus was Leckie (James Badge Dale), who took a fancy to a Greco-Australian woman called Stella (Claire van der Boom) after spotting her getting on a bus, managed to get her address (despite being half-drunk and a stranger), then found himself welcomed into the bosom of her family. In exchange for cleaning their guttering of vines, Leckie got a warm bed and slept with Stella under their roof; an arrangement everyone appeared very happy about. The celerity of Leckie's relationship with Stella and her parents' relaxed attitude to a Yankie soldier sleeping with their only daughter while AWOL, struck me as very peculiar. I'm forced to let it slide because The Pacific's based on actual WWII memoirs, so I assume these events did happen to the real-life Leckie, in this way. If so, lucky dog, but the story felt so unlikely and saccharine that I didn't swallow one second of it. Maybe the truth really is stranger than fiction.

Elsewhere, the only storyline of note was Basilone (Jon Seda) getting the Medal Of Honour for his heroics in Guadalcanal last time, which did a good job showing how such reward can connect with a man's soul and make a better soldier of someone, but there was a cruel twist in that Basilone was immediately ordered home by the Pentagon. A true American hero of his stature will do more good for the military as a spokesman back home, rather than risk his death on the frontline. Understandably, Basilone felt like he was letting his friends down by leaving them so soon.

Okay, here are my problems with The Pacific so far:

(1) This character-building episode has arrived too late, but what little it achieved for the likes of Leckie and Basilone doesn't feel like it'll have much bearing on what's to come. It would have been nice if Leckie's future battles against the Japanese had us yearning for him to be safe, if only to get back to the lovely Stella after the war, but instead this episode ended with Stella ending their relationship because she couldn't deal with the possibility he'll end up in an obituary. So the whole story was reduced to a light R&R story with no real bearing on what's to come. I guess it's possible Leckie will arrive back on Stella's doorstep after WWII ends, which would be nice, but I'd have preferred to feel their relationship was definitely still in play.

Similarly, Basilone's flown back to the USA, removed from the sharp end of conflict. I guess there's a chance he'll be back (isn't he one of the main characters?), but we'll have to see. Basically, the first hour of The Pacific should have given us solid reasons to care about these characters based on their pre-war lives, so we can feel connected to them and fear for their safety, but all we ever got was a 20-minute intro two episodes ago. Band Of Brothers got around the problem by focusing on the pre-D Day training. It was a shame The Pacific didn't have something similar.

(2) I like the documentary cold openings, but it's unfortunate they seem to just spell out the broad sweep of every episode. It was particularly noticeable here, as I knew exactly what would happen to the marines, so the actual drama was just the semi-fictional nitty-gritty at ground level.

(3) There are three kinds of people who watch WWII dramas, with some overlap: those who want to get inside the heads of the characters and feel the human trauma and drama of war from the comfort of their armchairs. Those who love history (perhaps in the military themselves) and just want to relish the ambience, costumes, period details and how the drama makes stiff facts and trivia feel alive in their mind. And those who essentially want huge reenactments of historic battles, told in as realistic and exciting way as possible (i.e lots of big explosions, gunfire, death, carnage and manly heroics.)

Trouble is, I don't think The Pacific is doing either one very well. The characters are still rake thin (Leckie's the most developed, but all we really know is he's more compassionate than his immature comrades and has an eye for the ladies), the battle sequences haven't impressed me yet (too incomprehensible and drowned in darkness), and while the production's definitely glossy and expensive enough to draw your eye and make you feel like 1943 exists on-screen, there's still a funny "Hollywood-ized" veneer to things. Perhaps tellingly, the (so far) superior Band Of Brothers was co-produced by the BBC, who are a lot better at making period drama feel authentic and less artificial.

Overall, I wish I was enjoying The Pacific more than I am, because I've spent a year waiting for its broadcast. It's not terrible, and I still have faith the story will hit a stride soon, but I expected to be far more invested in the characters and fascinated by the situation at this stage.

Asides

• As usual for a US production, I'm guessing a lot of the supporting "Australians" here were Americans doing their best Paul Hogan impressions?
• Worth noting that Isabel Lucas co-starred here as Gwen, the sexy Aussie girl Prvt. Sid Phillips (Ashton Holmes) dated while in Melbourne. Lucas is best known for a small role in Transformers 2, so it was a surprise to see her putting in a nice performance. And yes, I had to check IMDb to find Sid's name, as there are still plenty of faces I can't put names to.

12 APRIL 2010: SKY MOVIES/HD, 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part Two

WRITER: Bruce C. McKenna
DIRECTOR: David Nutter
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

[SPOILERS] Sky Premiere began airing HBO's ten-part WWII drama last night in the UK, starting with a double-bill. I've already reviewed Part One, if you'd like to check that out, so the review below only covers the second hour:

Part Two was more action-packed than the first, climaxing with the battle of Henderson Field -- where the US marines had to defend an airfield against a seemingly never-ending swarm of Japanese soldiers running full pelt towards them; their gunned down corpses becoming a wall of bodies that heroic Basilone (Jon Seda) risked his life to dismantle so his comrades could maintain a clear line of fire, before running off to get more ammo amidst falling enemy shells. It was bravery rewarded with a medal the morning after, but having lost his best friend Manny Rodriguez (Jon Bernthal) during the conflict, such an honour lost its sheen.

Before this nighttime battle, there was the usual mix of entertaining insights into military life; the men all starving because their naval lifeline had been destroyed, one grunt coping with diarrhoea, the bestowing of nicknames, reading out letters written for loved-ones back home, and stealing fresh supplies that had landed for the army latecomers.

It's all enjoyable to watch, but I've yet to be gripped by The Pacific's characters and plot. Right now it's just a handsome production that's great to look at, but I don't care about anyone yet, or even know most of their names. Part One focused on Leckie (James Badge Dale); Part Two spent some time with Basilone; and young Sledge (Joseph Mazzello) is sidelined in the US because of a medical condition, but will enter the fray before too long now his heart murmur's abated. I guess it's easy enough to focus on those three leads (and preferable to Band Of Brothers' big ensemble), but there are times when it becomes difficult to recognize people because they're in the same uniforms or obscured by helmets in certain angles.

Sometimes, a moment you were supposed to have a strong reaction to slips by because you couldn't comprehend or see what happened, or to whom. Part One and Two have faced a particular problem because all the action has happened in the dark, so it's taken me a few viewings to fathom what was going on sometimes. For instance, I'm not ashamed to admit I thought Basilone's heroics were the work of two men here. Admittedly, I'm not watching The Pacific in glorious HD, where the added clarity would help you see through the murkiness, but did anyone else find themselves losing the thread?

I'm also not feeling the passage of time or true ordeal of events, so it can feel strange when you realize weeks of time has passed, or the events you've been watching have been front-page news and everyone's considered national heroes now. Didn't they arrive, like, about four days ago? That's what it feels like. I also don't want to devalue real events, but it's the miniseries that hasn't convinced me we've seen anything out of the ordinary. You watch 10-minutes of a battle, and then you're reminded you just saw the dramatization of a very famous US victory, and it doesn't quite compute. Nothing here seemed big or scary enough to warrant such historical significance.

Each episode opens with a brief documentary featurette to set the scene for events in the ensuing episode, aided by quick interviews with real veterans, and those prologues are doing a much better job making me understand The Pacific campaign. I'm not saying documentaries are inherently better than drama at imparting knowledge, because there are things a drama can do that a documentary will never achieve, but so far The Pacific's drama hasn't got under my skin. A good real-life drama restages historical events as accurately as possible, while imbuing them with characters that can reveal the emotions and humanity a dry history lesson can't. I knew about D-Day for years thanks to my education, but I never felt emotional about it until I saw Saving Private Ryan's opening beach sequence. The Pacific should be pulling the same trick, but it's not quite there yet.

I'm enjoying it; just not feeling it.

Asides

• Just to be clear, I intend to follow Sky's UK broadcast of The Pacific (every Monday, so reviews every Tuesday), as I fell behind with the HBO transmission.


• I'm no doctor, but can heart murmurs clear up that quickly?

5 APRIL 2010: SKY PREMIERE 1 (HD), 9PM

THE PACIFIC: Part One

WRITER: Bruce C. McKenna
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

[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.

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

The Pacific: HBO/Sky Movies

WWII drama The Pacific starts tonight on HBO, but the mini-series won't reach UK shores until 4 April on Sky Movies. Therefore, my plan is to review The Pacific at US pace. Sorry, but a three-week wait is too much*, and UK audiences can easily delve into my archive once the show starts on Sky. Too often I've waited for UK airings and just find that the audience likely to read reviews of US shows are (a) American, or (b) downloading episodes before they debut in the UK, anyway.

* Like many people, I don't subscribe to the Sky Movies package. It's strange that Sky have decided to show The Pacific on Sky Movies and not its natural home of Sky1, but they say it's to provide a viewing experience without any advert interruptions. While I can totally understand that, it's a shame more Brits won't be able to watch The Pacific because Sky Movies have a lower audience share than Sky1. If Sky wanted to, they could give us a Sky1 repeat (with adverts) a few days later, so everyone's happy... but, of course, Sky are basically using The Pacific as a way to persuade people to subscribe to Sky Movies over the Easter weekend.

TRAILER PARK: The Pacific

The Pacific is Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks' follow-up to their award-winning mini-series Band Of Brothers. It promises to be another stunning piece of television, with a reported budget of $200 million (that's approximately £20m per episode!), and you can get a taste of what's to come from the embedded trailer above. To be honest, I'm not as interested in the Pacific side of WWII history, preferring instead the European struggle against the Nazi's, but I'm sure that won't matter a jot.

The Pacific is based on two memoirs written by US Marines: "With The Old Breed" by Eugene Sledge and "Helmet For My Pillow" by Robert Leckie. The series will tell the stories of these two authors and Marine John Basilone, as the war against the Empire of Japan rages. Famous battles reenacted in the series will include Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, Okinawa, and the Battle of Iwo Jima.

The 10-part series stars Jon Seda, Joseph Mazzello, James Badge Dale, William Sadler, Isabel Lucas, Brendan Fletcher, Penny McNamee and Jacob Pitts, amongst many others. Currently, HBO are planning to show the series in March 2010. Australia's Channel 7 will show it shortly afterwards, as will the UK's Sky Movies.