The Pacific: Hell Was An Ocean Away

Posted on Monday March 15, 2010, 22:12 by James White in Small Screen

The latest World War Two miniseries from Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and much of the team who brought us 2001’s Band Of Brothers landed on American screens Sunday night, launched with a ringing, library footage reminder of why America got into the conflict: Pearl Harbor.

I’ll answer one of the big, pressing questions up front: is it as good as Band Of Brothers? My response is I simply don’t know yet. Eschewing access to screeners, I’m watching each episode as it airs, savouring the experience of seeing it in 10 chunks and avoiding spoilers as much as possible to see how the story unfolds naturally.

Unlike Brothers, which threw you straight in with Easy Company and stacked up any number of similarly-uniformed, mud-caked faces to try to recognise and familiarise yourself with straight away, The Pacific has learned from this minor downside and instead focuses on three characters – veteran John Basilone (Jon Seda), writer/machine-gunner Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) and Eugene Sledge (Joseph Mazzello). Both Leckie and Sledge kept combat diaries, which have been used as he main source material for the series. And though we don’t just follow one single company, the smaller number of leads presents better opportunities for richer character studies.

The first episode, which introduces our three main leads (though sends only two of them off to fight, since Sledge is initially deemed unfit for duty thanks to a heart murmur), certain boils with promise. This time around, we get a deeper look at the men before the war, with some time spent at each of the soldiers’ family homes or hometowns and there’s apparently more where that came from in our future.

Each show opens with a mini documentary, narrated by Hanks, which explains where the war is at this point in time and adds in a little context for what the characters are going through. While it felt a little on the nose to begin with, it’ll serve as a handy briefing for those not quite up to speed on the minutiae of each battle.

Unlike the war in Europe, which had specific tactical goals and was based around retaking large swathes of countries that the troops could at least point out on a map, the Pacific Theatre was a lot harder for the average Marine grunt to wrap their heads around, as thousands of men were hurled into combat to retake or invade seemingly worthless rocks in the middle of an unforgiving ocean. While the generals had the bigger picture in mind, the soldiers were faced with even more alien, hostile territory, battling an enemy few of them understood beyond taking back land and taking revenge for “the date that will live in infamy.”

The show – at least so far – hasn’t had much time to sketch in the Japanese as much more than this strange, inexplicable enemy beyond the period-specific racist descriptions and expected pep talks from senior officers about how the US Marine Corps will kill them all. Since the story is being told from the point of view of the three leads, I have a feeling this will be more Flags Of Our Fathers than Letters From Iwo Jima.

HBO and its partners have spent $250 million putting this story up on screen, and even in just the first main battle, it shows – the action is once again frenzied and backed up by some impressive CG, while the lush Australian locations and jungle settings give you some idea of just what the young Marines faced when they first landed.

Hanks has gone on record as saying that the writers and directors tried to steer clear of the big war movie clichés, and while one or two are unavoidable, the first episode does an admirable job of conveying the fear, confusion and camaraderie of the troops. History lends a hand with one of the early moments as the Marines scramble from landing craft leading you to expect a Saving Private Ryan-style fire fight, only to discover fellow US military types waiting for them on the beach and the Japanese disappeared off into the jungle.

A smart choice was choosing leading actors that, even if they’re not exactly unknown newcomers, at least aren’t well-known names and faces to distract from the bigger story being told and leading us to expect who will make it home and who might not. Aside, of course from Mazzello, though that’s mostly because you have that brief moment of “it’s the kid from Jurassic Park!” revelation. All three – and the men surrounding them – play their parts with ease and humanity, and it helps that they had the military life beaten into them by former Marine Dale Dye in the seemingly obligatory boot camp before filming commenced.

Though the leads are supposed to be people we don’t recognise, there is also strong support from some great character actors, with William Sadler stealing scenes and pumping out speeches as Colonel Lewis 'Chesty' Puller.

Whether The Pacific ends up as equal to, or even (whisper the blasphemy) better than Band Of Brothers, I’m on board to find out.