The Pacific

 Basilone on Iwo Jima; courtesy of pacificfans.com

WOW.  That had to be the most powerful ten hours of television I have ever watched.  I now know why the European theater is the one everyone glorifies; The Pacific was just downright nasty, and Spielberg, Hanks, and company did an excellent job portraying that nightmare.  I knew I was going to love this show when during the second episode the director played on our culture's endless familiarity with Saving Private Ryan and Vietnam movies.  We saw soldiers in their landing craft, waiting for the doors to open and hell to break loose;  when they opened there was already a wave of troops resting on the beach.  They had the Marines humping through the jungle on Guadalcanal;  Every muscle in my body was tense just waiting for a platoon of Japanese guerrillas to ambush the troops.  It never came.  There were countless other times like this throughout the entire miniseries: I was completely on edge waiting for the next shoe to drop, giving me just a small taste, for just an hour, of what these men lived through for 3 years.

Eugene Sledge; courtesy of pacificfans.com

The acting in the miniseries was also outstanding.  Jon Seda, who played John Basilone, did an excellent job of portraying the reluctant hero.  Throughout most of the war he was Stateside campaigning for war bonds.  He did not sign up for that, he signed up to fight; he wasn't a hero in his mind, he just did his job.  Joseph Mazzello (Timmy from Jurassic Park) was amazing as the gun ho teen Eugene Sledge who was completely transformed by the horrors he witnessed on Peleliu and Okinawa.  His line to the young woman trying to help him enroll in classes at Alabama Tech summed up his metamorphosis, so coolly, yet so full of intensity and disgust about what he learned in the Marine Corps: "I learned how to kill Japs.  And I got pretty damn good at it."  Then there was James Badge Dale, who played the skeptic Robert Leckie.  He did not go to war to be a hero.  He knew, probably from his vast literary background, that war was not pretty, glorious, fun.  This skepticism is probably what made him the least damaged of the three main characters.

Performance of the Series: Rami Malek as Snafu; courtesy hbo.com

But there was one character that stole the show.  Rami Malek was phenomenal as Merriell "Snafu" Shelton, a borderline sociopath and ends up being Sledge's best friend, simply because they live the longest of their mortar squad.  Malek did an excellent job of portraying a cold blooded killer completely suited for the war in the Pacific theater.  Yet he was also able to give him a slight touch of humanity, as if Sledge were rubbing off on him.  This performance hopefully will be a launching pad for Malek, because he showed he is supremely talented.  Very rarely did Snafu say something or do something that didn't touch a nerve, trigger an emotion, or just send a chill down your spine.  Very few actors can do this on demand, and this character needed to have that effect because he was the yin to Sledge's yang.  When Sledge was optimistic and idealist, Snafu was completely heartless and cynical.  As Sledge became more line Snafu, Snafu became more like Sledge.  This ebb and flow between these two characters really made the show, and without such a powerful and difficult performance by Malek, it doesn't come off as convincing and falls flat.

The Pacific was a powerful miniseries.  There wasn't an episode that passed (except maybe the Melbourne one) where I didn't get off the couch and say to myself "I could never do that."  It made me truly appreciative of the heroic sacrifice these men made and the men and women of our armed forces continue to make.  Thank you.