---
title: "The Pacific"
year: 2010
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-pacific"
fi1m_score: 74
critics_score: 59
critics_reviews: 6
published: "2026-09-17T13:05:13.348519+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T13:05:33.803689+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Pacific (2010)

Created by Bruce McKenna · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Action & Adventure, War & Politics

**Fi1m score: 74** · Critics 59 from 6 reviews

*In a sentence:* Ten hours in which the mud gets a better part than most of the cast

> Bruce McKenna’s ten-part follow-up to *Band of Brothers* is bleaker, harder to follow and less easy to love, and for three episodes we struggled to tell the Marines apart. Stay with it: from the midpoint it is a fine, punishing piece of work.

## Synopsis

December 1941, days after Pearl Harbor. In New Jersey, newspaperman Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) enlists in the Marines. In Mobile, Alabama, Eugene Sledge (Joseph Mazzello) is kept home by a heart murmur while his friend Sidney Phillips (Ashton Holmes) ships out without him. Sergeant John Basilone (Jon Seda) is already in the corps and bound for the fighting. In August 1942 the 1st Marine Division lands on Guadalcanal to hold an airfield the Japanese want back. What follows is a night battle at a river, months of jungle, rain and malaria, and rations that run out long before relief arrives. Leckie’s platoon includes Bill ‘Hoosier’ Smith (Jacob Pitts), and he writes home to Vera Keller (Caroline Dhavernas), a neighbour he barely knows.

## Review

Bruce McKenna’s ten-part series follows three United States Marines across the Pacific war, from the landing on Guadalcanal in August 1942 to the islands that came after it. It arrives in the shadow of [*Band of Brothers*](https://film.one/tv/band-of-brothers) (2001), and it has decided not to be that programme. There is no single company to belong to, no roll-call of faces learned over the first hour, no warmth from the men’s home towns. *The Pacific* is a long, hard, frequently ugly piece of television, and for its first third it is also a confusing one. It is good, and it is not comfortable.

The ground is the thing it gets most right. Anthony Pratt builds Guadalcanal as a wall of wet green with a river and an airstrip cut into it, and the later islands as something worse: white coral that holds the heat, no shade, no soil to dig into. Remi Adefarasin and Stephen F. Windon shoot the jungle nights almost black, so the fighting is a matter of tracer, muzzle flash and shapes in the water, and the coral days so bright the men squint through whole scenes. Penny Rose’s uniforms start olive and end the colour of the mud the men are lying in.

James Badge Dale carries the early hours as Robert Leckie, a newspaperman turned rifleman who talks too much, writes to a girl (Caroline Dhavernas) he has met once, and uses his wit as a shield until it stops working. Joseph Mazzello’s Eugene Sledge arrives late, soft-faced and eager, and Mazzello lets us watch the softness go a scene at a time without ever announcing it. Rami Malek, as Snafu Shelton, does most of his acting with a stare and a slow chewing jaw, and he is the one you remember. Jon Seda’s John Basilone is the odd thread; his episodes sit slightly apart from the others, decent but never as gripping as the men around Leckie.

Then the trouble. Six directors, among them Tim Van Patten, David Nutter and Carl Franklin, share the ten episodes, and the seams show early. Under helmets and dirt the Marines are hard to tell apart, and for two hours we were not always sure which unit we were with or why it had moved. The officers, William Sadler’s Chesty Puller chief among them, are played as monuments rather than people. The Japanese are almost never faces; they are shapes in the dark, and the series notices this about its Marines without noticing it about itself. Hans Zimmer, Blake Neely and Geoff Zanelli write a main theme of slow strings and piano that is lovely over the titles and, under a scene, tells us what to feel a beat before the actors have.

Here is what got to us. The night fight at the river on Guadalcanal, cut by editors Alan Cody, Edward A. Warschilka and Marta Evry as tracer, water and shouting with no angle from which we could tell who was winning, frightened us more than television usually manages. Later, and we will not say where, the men stop reacting to the dead around them, and the series does not comment. We felt sick, and then realised the programme had been building to that sickness for hours, and that the confusion of the early episodes was part of the build. By the last two hours we were moved in a way we had not expected from a programme that spends so long refusing to be liked.

The reviews are split: three of the six we read admire it, two do not, and the complaint from the doubters is that it favours accuracy over character and cannot be followed. The first half of that is fair; the second only for the first three episodes. After the halfway mark it is a different programme, and the best of it stands with any war drama made for television.

Watch it in order, at home, with the lights off, and do not judge it on the first two episodes. It carries a 15 certificate, which if anything undersells the middle.

*Fi1m score 74, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews split widely. What nearly everyone agrees on is the combat: the firefights are staged with a ferocity and ground-level realism that most critics find more brutal than anything in Band of Brothers, and the effects and production values draw praise even from those who dislike the series. The stronger notices go further, calling the depiction of the campaign as complete as any film’s and picking out James Badge Dale’s Leckie among a strong cast.

The reservations cluster on the people rather than the battles. Several critics find the marines hard to tell apart in the early episodes, the characterisation thin and the plot difficult to follow, with The Guardian and The Independent both arguing that period detail has been favoured over psychology. Variety goes furthest, finding the series weighed down by its own importance, though it rates the final hours highest. Den of Geek’s enthusiasm rests on the first two episodes only.

### Reviews we read (6)

- **The Hollywood Reporter** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a gem that conveys the combat experience as completely and realistically as any film, with raw stories of personal triumph and adversity in a random, contained approach. It singles out abundant strong performances, especially James Badge Dale as Leckie, and outstanding effects. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/pacific-tv-review-29361/)
- **Empire**, William Thomas (70/100, inferred): The critic emphasizes that The Pacific is bleaker and more brutal than Band of Brothers, depicting a hard-R campaign with unsparing ferocity and racial undertones. It singles out the strong character focus on three Marines and the powerful quiet moments amid the intense battle scenes. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/pacific-review/)
- **The Independent** (45/100, inferred): The expensive series educates viewers on the Pacific campaign and stages thrilling battles, but it suffers from simplistic characters, lantern-jawed officers, and a lack of psychological depth in its portrayal of the Japanese. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/the-pacific-sky-moviesthe-man-who-cycled-the-americas-bbc1-1941114.html)
- **The Guardian** (40/100, inferred): The lavish production values and attention to historical detail are impressive, but the series favours verisimilitude over characterisation, making it difficult to distinguish the marines or follow a clear plot in the early episodes. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/11/pacific-spielberg-comedy-roast-review)
- **Variety**, Brian Lowry (30/100, inferred): The review finds the miniseries weighed down by its own importance and lacking cohesion compared to Band of Brothers, with powerful sequences spaced too far apart. It praises the unflinching ground-level view of war but notes the final hours as the strongest for their emotional depth. [Read](https://variety.com/2010/scene/markets-festivals/the-pacific-1117942353/)
- **Den of Geek**, Nick Horton (90/100, inferred): The critic finds the first two episodes a worthy, blockbuster-quality follow-up to Band of Brothers that is visually spectacular and compelling. They single out the visceral firefights and epic yet intimate production values for praise while noting it is an unashamedly American perspective on the war. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-pacific-episodes-1-2-review/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Bruce McKenna
- **Creator:** Bruce McKenna
- **Director:** Tim Van Patten, Jeremy Podeswa, David Nutter, Graham Yost, Tony To, Carl Franklin
- **Writer:** Robert Schenkkan, Bruce McKenna, Laurence Andries, Michelle Ashford, Graham Yost, George Pelecanos
- **Cinematography:** Remi Adefarasin, Stephen F. Windon
- **Editor:** Alan Cody, Edward A. Warschilka, Marta Evry
- **Music:** Hans Zimmer, Blake Neely, Geoff Zanelli
- **Production design:** Anthony Pratt
- **Costume design:** Penny Rose
- **Producer:** Cherylanne Martin, Steven Shareshian, Todd London
- **Cast:** James Badge Dale as Robert Leckie; Jon Seda as John Basilone; Joseph Mazzello as Eugene Sledge; Ashton Holmes as PFC Sidney Phillips; Jacob Pitts as PFC Bill 'Hoosier' Smith; Rami Malek as PFC Merriell 'Snafu' Shelton; William Sadler as Lt Col. Lewis 'Chesty' Puller; Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Manuel 'Manny' Rodriguez
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 14 March 2010
- **Genres:** Drama, Action & Adventure, War & Politics
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1fXW-dU1Cc

## Where to watch in the US

- HBO Max: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Hulu: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Band of Brothers* (2001): The warmer, tidier elder sibling; one company, learned face by face, from Normandy on.
- *The Thin Red Line* (1998), Fi1m 84: Guadalcanal again, but Malick slows it to grass, light and men thinking aloud. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-thin-red-line.md)
- *Letters from Iwo Jima* (2006), Fi1m 84: The other side of the same beaches, given the faces this series withholds. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/letters-from-iwo-jima.md)
- *Fires on the Plain* (1959): Japanese soldiers starving in the Philippines; the bleakest war film we know, and the plainest.
- *Generation Kill* (2008): Same seven-part patience applied to Iraq, with sharper talk and fewer heroics.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-pacific