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RATING
After watching the first episode of HBO’s new mini-series ‘The Pacific’, I was surprised to find myself getting emotional at the closing credits. I’m not sure whether it was because my grandfather had served on Guadalcanal as a doctor during World War II or the realization that after 70 years, we haven’t learned any lessons, we still continue to fight one another and we aren’t any closer to peace on earth good will towards men. In fact, it seems we’ve regressed. Our wars are no longer fought for concrete or noble reasons, instead they’re nebulous and unecessary and the thought that so many of our nation’s youth have given their lives and continue to give their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, fills me with a sickening rage.
This however is a brief review not a lengthy sermon, so getting to the nuts and bolts of this episode, I found it tremendously well executed on all fronts. About a year ago I read Norman Mailer’s epic WW II novel ‘The Naked and the Dead’ and while watching tonight’s installment (which focuses on the 1st Marines landing on Guadalcanal), I kept referring back to it in my mind, amazed at how close it came to Mailer’s brilliantly written description of what it was like slogging through the jungles of the South Pacific. In fact, the scene in which they first arrive on the beach is pretty much exactly how it’s described in ‘TNATD’. There was an authenticity to how the soldiers were portrayed which made me momentarily forget that this was not a film from the 1940s. Technically i
t was extremely impressive, throwing the viewer right in the middle of the action and managing to do so in a way that separated itself from other iconic works like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘A Walk in the Sun’.
This first offering had a ‘matter of fact’ quality to it which I felt was quite unique. Usually WW II films fall into a couple of categories; the wordy, philosophical ruminations and those steeped in the harsh realities and mechanics of war. ‘The Pacific’ seems like it might be an excellent combination of the two. In addition, there was a healthy dash of ambiguity lobbed into the mix which gave the proceedings a great depth.
‘The Pacific’ is based primarily on two memoirs of U.S. Marines: ‘With the Old Breed’ by Eugene Sledge and ‘Helmet for My Pillow’ by Robert Leckie. This series will tell the stories of those two authors as well as Marine John Basilone. This first chapter established all three characters, but is mostly just a general introduction. I’m taking it as a good sign at how fast the hour went by and despite the subject matter and brutality of its depiction, how damned entertained I was.
Bottom line, my interest is piqued and I’m ready for more.
This series from my point of view does a huge disservice to the marines we honor every 10 Nov of every year especially for several years knew one of the men who was in the Island hopping campaign and retired after Vietnam.
On the other hand, when you are a Marine who actually fought in our current conflicts-I do not nget a big fat woodie seeing one of the producers who probably has done nothing in life and decides to stick to all Marines regaurdless of the rightness of a war or the honor of combat with those who bleed with you.
First as a series-absolutely no context and does not even get to the heart of a Marine fighting 3-5 bdays nonstop and see some not in the fight yet looking at the raggedy ass Marines. Just throw a bunch of guys together with no sense of what a Marine is or does, no shared experiances in training-let me say this-this is such a dishonor in everything said and looking at this-it is almost unbelievable to think those actors resembled anything close to a Marine. let me say this, go to any Marine and claim you once were a Marine and can tell if you are the real deal or not seeing you from a mile away before you even approach them.
All the crap in the last scenes were basicaly some kid is all scared because he shot someone when basically someone would of jumped down his throat for not doing it much sooner. Unless the Jap has his hands up as is known Japs do not surrender and you have no clue what equipment he has-there is only one action and it is kill. What if ole boy is allowed to walk up and takes a grenade out and wants to take you and a few buddies to hell with him becuase believe it or not-that is what Japs, zips, nipponese did back then which gave us a hell of a lot more respect for our enemy compared to the respect to Marines in this series is getting.
If the enemy runs away you shoot then in the freaking back and when you come upon a wounded enemy soldier with a rifle in his hands you shoot them in the freaking face-and much of this learned and put into practice in hell hoes being potrayed in this series and the last one which was credible.
All this belly aching over racism and all tyhis crap-go find a Marine from that era or a soldier and have the balls to tell them you thought they were racist for being at war with Japan and guaranteed you will get a lesson in life you never thought you could learn. There is one group of people who have a dammed sight more respect for those Marines and am talking of the Japanese we fought
Don’t get me wrong-no I am not racist and when I know about 10,000 soldiers were bayonated to death for not keeping up on the Bataan death march-some of us tend to look at things in a black and white way with no shades of grey.
Whoever the author of this review is knows nothing of regression nor a conception of how life really is being last time I checked we never went and rounded up Arab Muslims to stick them in concetration camps and really-live and roam freely in the United States with hardly a flurry of violent crimes against Arab-Americans in our time.
I can smell the perverbial crap coming down stream and let me get this straight from the outset in the very first time, if you really think we were racist against the japanese I reckon we owe them an apology so when the Democratic Party gets ready to send an apology to Japan, might as well include the Philippinoos we enslaved in the turn of the century after we bought the Philippines from Spain as a condition of peace and while your at it, if you think America owes reparations for slavery in our country, I reckon once again once the Democratic party pony up amnd drain their Treasury of the democratic party,
Do not let me forget, it was the liberal Christians who encouraged Mickenley to turn us loose in the Philippines in the mission of God to bring heaven on earth after we civilize the Philipinos when all they wanted was self determination. Of course, we call it insurgency. Mexico, trail of tears, Hawaii-you will always find a liberal flapping their gums about racism until it starts to get pointed out liberal and democrats are to blame in almost every crime you can think America is guilty for-look know further then the democratic party.
I especially like it when Sen Ried(Lord take care of his wife and kid and bring them to good health and recover from whatever happened to them)-when Sen Ried was able to paint the republican conservatives of using the same exact tactic used to free the slaves-slow down slow down WHAT!!! I still cannot understand when the party in power did the most racist actions and turn it around and blame conservatives when the whole point of the REpublican Party was created to end slavery and get away with such filthy lies.
Not sure what your final point is at all… The two parties have swapped ideologies… It’s odd to think about but has happened time and time again in our nation’s history. Between the end of the civil war and the signing of the civil rights act, the two parties essentially switched… The reasons for the switch are complex partly economic, partly geographic and partly due to the huge influx of immigrants in the late 19th century and early 20th century… Sufficed to say, the ‘party of lincoln’ is not the republican party of today. If Lincoln were alive today he’d be a Democrat…. or Independent
This series is a huge disapointment. I loved Band of Brothers and the PBS series The War but this series seems to have a political agenda that doesn’t really reflect what the people of the day were thinking. I also hate that the F word was used just as loosley as it is in todays garbage films. I’m sure if accuracy was important to these producers they would show such lanquage was not used so frequently. While cursing was a common occurance it was not to this extreme. The people of our country felt the way they did about the japanese because of Pearl Harbor not because they were a different shade. Battle brings out violence and the hatred we feel at that time. Especially when comrades are being killed on a regular basis. It would have been nice to see a series as good as Band of Brothers or The War. By the way, you exposing your arrogance and political leanings to suggest Lincoln would be a D today. How the hell would you know that!.
Jesse McCoy
It’s common knowledge, the parties switched ideologies over the years… As I stated, for a variety of reasons, the final turnover being the South which had been heavily Dixie-cratic, turned republican in protest when Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights act… that’s just history. Also, have you ever read ‘the naked and the dead’ by Norman Mailer, perhaps the greatest book ever written on WWII? The opening episode took a lot of the realism from that book and executed it perfectly… and by the way, that book was filled with the ‘f-word’ as you put it…because guess what….that’s how people talked!,,, I don’t know what kind of world you’ve got envisioned in your head about ‘the good old days’, but it wasn’t this ridiculous republican fairy tale you’ve got rattling around in your skull..
grow up…
David Emme up there doesn’t get it. If he thinks racism was not a part of peoples attitudes in the 1940s, he needs to take a reality check. Racism was a part of the way people around the world at the time thought. This is not to say that simply because of that, people were inherently bad, just that things were different then. That everyone had some racist attitude to one extent or another at the time does not condone or excuse, but you need to have some historical perspective.
Second, all that killing and death is far from the rah-rah flag waving patriotism in B-grade action movies. Killing has an affect on people. If it doesn’t then probably something is wrong with them. Soldiers kill, yes, and it’s not pretty or glorious.
I have visited both Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, the place the war started and where it ended, for the U.S. and Japan. Did the people who died in that war on both sides deserve it? Some surely did. Most did not. I cannot see how a Japanese woman incinerated at Hiroshima deserved her death any more than an American soldier brutally killed in the Bataan Death March. I have met and spoken with Japanese and Americans who lost family in the war, and their pain and yes, their often hard feelings point to a much more complex picture than David paints.
If you have half a brain, you can see that WW2 was a great tragedy for humanity. I do not doubt the righteousness of the Allied cause. I do not belittle the service and sacrifice of my own family members who served and died in the Pacific. The world is better for having got rid of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. But have the sense and intelligence to realize that real war is not something you play on your Xbox, never something to wish for, and that once you get into one, there is always a price to be paid. if you’re lucky, the price is worth it.
David, if you really want to honour the servicemen of WWII (or any war for that matter), you’re best adviced to stay away from opening your mouth on the subject. You post is one of the most ignorant and stupifying remarks I’ve read on any message board. Follow Zeitgeist´s advice and read “The Naked And The Dead”. You’ll be surprised that it contains not only an accurate depiction of one of the most gruesome campaigns (Guadalcanal) ever to be fought (Mailer himself served during the Great War, so I would suppose he has bearing for his words), but you’ll also find that it contains loads of commas and punctuations. So you’ll kill two birds with one stone.
I have now watched 9 episodes…it reached a point where I literally had to pump iron dumbbells to use up the adrenaline pouring into my blood as frankly, the realism, the horror and frightening nature of this bloody horrid war was brought into my life in a way that no one has ever been able to do. That was the sure point all right. The Pacific War was one of the most costly to Americans by far in terms of density of casualties in the modern age. The program makes it clear without yet saying it that the use of the atom bomb was a terrible necessity. Next week, perhaps they will say it but right now and from the beginning, I felt more and more the inevitable need to end this nightmare. No wonder soldiers did not come home and brag of their adventures. No..there was nothing to want to remember. The true brutal sense of it, the anger and hatred, the inexplicable and random deaths be they good or not so good is what war surely has in it. If you are in the way, you die. It does not matter if you are a nice guy or a lunatic. Step this way or crawl that way, it is chance along with training but really, it is just what happens. The opposing forces were extraordinary and to Americans at that time were as if extraterrestrial and with a totally different sense of the value of individual lives. The Marines were faced with human waves of seemingly fearless soldiers and also the horrible use of civilians which can only remind me of how today such acts are still done by other inexplicable enemies. I feel as a Canadian that the U.S. Marine Corp are worthy of my utmost respect for their bravery, training, and the unenviable job that they were called upon to do. Most of us up here know most about the European Theatre to which one in twelve Canadians were in uniform to fight each in his own way but the Japanese War was the American major effort and it is about time that this story was told. It could not have been done better. For those that denigrate the military, the use of deadly force, the dropping of the A bomb, I can only suggest that you were not there, did not live through such times and can only make comparisons to the rather more restrained war activities of today and having a sense of the Pacific War one can not see it the same today. My brother in law was on a ship hit by Kamikazee suicide planes. Don’t tell me that this war was unnecessary or that it was like the movies. No, it was not..until this miniseries that is.