War Makes Men Savage

HBO Miniseries.

New addiction.

"The Pacific" is a harrowing tale of young soldiers thrown in fierce battles against the Japanese in the Pacific islands. I found the first episode familiar. Maybe I've seen too many war movies in the past. Saving Private Ryan. Black Hawk Dawn. Pearl Harbor. Hurt Locker. Among others. I keep on removing my headsets when the scene suggests foreboding. Explosions can really make me jumpy and edgy. The series is not for the faint of heart. It has too much blood and gore. 

I've just finished the fifth episode. I can't wait to see how it ends.

James Badge Dale as Robert Leckie. Poet. 

Joseph Mazzello as Eugene Sledge. Believer.

"The Pacific" is based primarily on two memoirs of U.S. Marines, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge and Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie. Sledge and Leckie play a big role in the series. Robert Leckie is played by James Badge Dale who's the lead cast in AMC's Rubicon. He can be easily mistaken as Matthew Morrison's (Mr. Shuster in Glee) older brother. Eugen Sledge, on the other hand, is portrayed with affecting tenderness by Joseph Mazzello, who made an appearance (recently) in David Fincher's 'The Social Network' as one of Facebook's founders.

One thing that I love about the series is it always shows the map of the Pacific and the Philippines is always mentioned. It somehow hits close to home.

It's also interesting to note that the actors in the series went through a boot camp to make them experience the real thing. "They [filmmakers] wanted to  break us down," said Dale in an interview, "These men in the Pacific were broken down. They were broken physically, mentally, and spiritually. The idea of that boot camp was to give us a taste of that. How much can you break a human being down in 10 days? You’d be surprised at how much they can do."

A close friend who works in Philippine Star as a graphic artist actually wrote an article/press release for the paper before The Pacific was shown. You can read the write-up here.