| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
The usual White supremacist nonsense about how Whites fought - and died - to free the world from racist aggression, only to impose their own brand of the same on the allegedly-saved world. In this regard, the equally-bland movie Saving Private Ryan has to bear much of the blame for the existence of this Band of Brothers tv-series rip-off.
Despite claims of historical accuracy, the fact that the US armed forces were racially-segregated, is never mentioned. There are also no conscientious objectors here, only mostly true-blue Aryan supermen - in military uniform. The fact that the Second World War was a profoundly racist one is rarely-mentioned - even though this was crucial to the justification for it. This was especially true of the Pacific War, which presented (in White propaganda) the Japanese as genetic inferiors in a way that the Germans, in Europe, were never depicted. Although both sides engaged in this race-baiting, this White drama evades the issue as much as possible because it undercuts the phoney heroism on show.
Here, war brings out whatever is latent in everyone who takes part. But the characterization is so poor that we never really come to appreciate this fully; and, any discussion of the wider politics of combat is taken as read rather than properly analyzed. Only the ethnically-correct casting implies some of the dramatic possibilities missed by this mediocre drama. This would be as if war served no political purpose whatsoever, when the paradox here is that that would invalidate not only the reason for fighting the war being depicted in the first place, as well as its depiction.
This self-contradictory mini-series is a victim of the Political-Correctness of being produced by a country (the USA) currently (2012) at war in the so-called War on Terror, so much so that it fears to address politics directly for fear of being labelled unpatriotic.
As with recent Hollywood war movies, there is a predictably-regressive attitude to warfare - especially as regards the enemy - who is portrayed only from a distance, as mere targets to be slaughtered while the GIs are rather more bulletproof! Here, characterisation counts for far less than Whites having an axe to grind about the West’s present economic decline by rewriting their own history as if it were far more glorious than it ever was or ever could have been. Political propaganda disguised as drama that is too sanctimonious and self-righteous for its own good.
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