'Band of Brothers' to the rescue?

By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Halfway through "Band of Brothers," HBO's $125 million, 10-hour adaptation of Stephen E. Ambrose's critically lauded nonfiction best seller, I was ready to throw in the towel.
At that point, I'd abandoned all hope of ever caring about the brave young men of Easy Company who fought so courageously in World War II.
The clich & eacute;d "Reds"-style "witnesses" whose memories serve as preamble to each episode; Michael Kamen's sonorous orchestral score prodding us to feel emotions that haven't been earned; self-consciously beautiful photography; and a complete and utter lack of character development had reduced this highfalutin' cable television "event" into a ponderous bore.
Despite the title (taken from Shakespeare's "Henry V"), which alludes to the legendary camaraderie of Easy Company -- from boot camp in Camp Toccoa, Ga., under the iron fist of the despised Lt. Sobel (David Schwimmer) to paratrooping into France on D-Day, to the Battle of the Bulge -- their sense of communality doesn't register until the second half.
Of course, it's tough getting a feel for this much-vaunted kinship when you can't tell one member of the squad from another.
Standing out: In the early going, the only characters who emerge from the primordial muck of combat are actors familiar to us from previous roles: Schwimmer; Ron Livingston (from cult movies "Swingers" and "Head Office"); "Oz" tough-guy Kirk Acevedo; and former New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg.
For the first five hours, "Brothers" is a lot of sound and fury signifying not much of anything besides the cinematographer's art.
One gets the sense that producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were deliberately striving for a blend of the visceral impact of Spielberg's masterful "Saving Private Ryan" (which starred Hanks) and the visual poetry of Terrence Malick's less popular but even better 1998 World War II film, "The Thin Red Line." Unfortunately, all that painstaking craftsmanship feels hollow without any heartfelt investment in the men who are sacrificing their lives.
Half the time we don't even know which soldier is which. (Who's the grunt that got his leg shot off in Episode 3? I haven't a clue.)
Emotional focus: Fortunately, this abstract quality dissipates in "Bastogne" (Episode 6), and "Band of Brothers" eventually makes good on its promise -- and its good intentions. Perhaps the filmmakers realized that, while cramming in as many faces as possible into the cramped Easy fighting unit may be true to actual battle situations, it makes for lousy drama.
In "Bastogne," director David Leland allows us to follow one of the heretofore virtually anonymous soldiers at length.
Narrowing the focus to Medic Eugene Roe (memorably played by gifted newcomer Shane Taylor) and his fight to stave off combat exhaustion and fatigue during a hellish Christmas spent in a Belgium forest, gives viewers an emotional entry point into the series for the first time.
As filled with indelible images as "Bastogne" is (the fairytale-like setting submerged in snow; the trenches with soldiers' heads sticking out; etc.), the most haunting of all is Taylor's wonderfully expressive face.
This empathetic young actor single-handedly pulls "Brothers" out from under its suffocating weight of nobility and self-importance and brings it into the land of the living.
Leland's miniature masterpiece has the self-contained feel of a great Hemingway short story, and no knowledge of the previous episodes is necessary to derive its full impact. If you see only one hour of "Brothers," make sure that it's this one.
Coming together: Easy Company's esprit de corps finally surfaces in Episode 7 as the men rally in protest of their useless commander, Lt. Dike (Peter O'Merea). A cowardly, well-connected Yalie with no discernible combat skills, Dike nearly gets his unit massacred. Never again will the soldiers in "Band of Brothers" feel like remote ciphers; real personalities have surfaced at last.
A sobering reminder of the sacrifices made by Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" is this production's tacit acknowledgment of the many World War II veterans who were just as shell-shocked and emotionally damaged as Vietnam or Gulf War vets decades later. They just hid it better. (I guess that's what the Ike years were all about.)
Cast: The actors destined to emerge most victorious from this miniseries -- and open a lot of casting doors in the future -- are Taylor; former teen idol Wahlberg, who brings compassion and quiet dignity to his role as the most heroic "brother;" and Livingston, who proves he's got the "right stuff" that makes movie stars. Possessed with both Tom Hanks' everyman quality and George Clooney's sensitive virility, Livingston commandeers the wrenching final episodes and displays a range previously untapped in his earlier comic roles.
Although Damian Lewis -- a Brit with an impeccable American accent but precious little personality or screen presence -- has the largest role as Lt. Winters, "Brothers" truly belongs to Livingston.
No doubt "Brothers" will sweep the Emmy Awards next year in categories like cinematography and art direction, but without performances like Livingston's, Wahlberg's and Taylor's to be the foreground to all that technical brilliance, its dazzling luster would have been meaningless.
One final note: You'll need a heart of stone not to get choked up during the closing vignettes, which tell what happened to the members of Easy Company after they returned home. Be sure to keep the tissues handy.