Spielberg, Hanks return to combat zone

With each passing day, more World War II veterans are dying, taking with them valuable shards of history. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks keep doing what they can to ensure that their valiant efforts burn brightly in our memories.

The Hollywood heavyweights who famously joined forces on “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers” return to the combat zone once again as executive producers of HBO’s “The Pacific,” an awe-inspiring 10-part, $200 million miniseries that recalls America’s gruesome war against Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“The Pacific” tracks the real-life journeys of three Marines — Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and John Basilone (Jon Seda) — as they battle the Japanese on remote specks of turf they’d never heard of: Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.

As the saga unfolds, their paths occasionally intersect, but each has his own story to tell. Leckie, a budding journalist, pens contemplative letters to a woman back home he barely knows.

Sledge, the idealistic son of wealthy parents, is at first kept out of the war by a heart condition, but eventually finds himself trapped in an existence more hellish than he ever imagined.

Basilone, a former boxer, commits a stunning act of bravery that turns him into an instant hero who is considered by his government to be more useful as a celebrity pitchman for war bonds on the home front than as a fighter in the trenches.

With this multipronged approach, “The Pacific,” at times, feels less cohesive than “Band of Brothers.” And though it is packed with high-caliber performances, this cast doesn’t quite match its predecessor — man for man — in terms of on-screen magnetism.

One notable exception is Rami Malek, who as a brash, droopy-eyed warrior nicknamed “Snafu” is a major scene-stealer.

In other ways, however, “The Pacific” trumps “Brothers.” The thunderous battle scenes, for example, might be the most harrowingly visceral ever put on film. They plunge us deep into a frenetic chaos of noise, blood, anxiety and human carnage until we’re practically gasping for breath. The film’s directors seem determined not to spare our feelings, but intensify them.

In that same vein, the filmmakers also pay meticulous, unflinching attention to the ghastly conditions imposed upon the troops by jungle warfare: torrential rain, brutal heat, dysentery, malaria, rats, maggots and rotting corpses all around.

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