The Pacific - Pilot, Part 1: Guadalcanal/Leckie

The World Wars were such a long time ago that the first is hardly in living memory anymore, and the second won't be for much longer. Yet, through the multitude of movies and televisions shows made about those historic periods, we do still manage to remember a little longer.

HBO's The Pacific focuses on the war between the Japanese and the Americans during World War II. We will follow the course of a few men as they find themselves on jungle islands, fighting against an enemy. Almost immediately, we can tell that Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) is a little different. He's educated, and he's a writer; his perspective will be different from his fellow soldiers.

Those differences were made apparent through the presentation of Leckie's inability to dehumanize his enemy, which was two-fold, the first part brilliant, the second standard. After a horrid night battle, where the Americans shot at an oncoming enemy, one for all I could tell who could have been Japanese or American, several more Japanese soldiers appeared. Most were shot down immediately, but one was not. The Americans started playing with him, like a cat with a mouse, shooting to either side of him, forcing him to run back and forth, than hitting him in the shoulder and leg. Leckie, ignoring all his comrades in arms, took careful aim and killed the man, to the complaints of his friends.

This demonstration of his compassion, his refusal to give into the mob mentality that allows his comrades to face the horrors before them, was subtle and beautiful (I mean beautiful in a purely artistic sense, of course). When this scene was followed by Leckie opening up an enemy soldier's backpack to find a photo of the man and his wife, as well as a cloth doll likely belonging to his daughter, I could not help but roll my eyes. We had already got the picture that Leckie had not forgotten that the people he was killing were men too.

As for the battles, I have never felt such fear while watching a war movie or show before. The idea of tromping through forest, never knowing if or when an enemy might appear, is terrifying. Worse were the night scenes. It is no wonder that friendly fire took down a man who had left the group to take a piss; the soldiers were on edge, shooting before anyone else had the opportunity.

The above mentioned night battle was equally disturbing, though it made the carnage more easy to understand. It is easy to cut down men when it is too dark to tell what they are.

The Pacific promises to be a powerful and emotional depiction of the theatre of war in the Pacific in World War II, and while, like any war film, it may be hard to stomach the carnage and violence based in reality, it certainly will be worth it.