Band of Brothers (2001) Rated: Not rated by the MPAA. Runtime: Runtime: 600 min (10 episodes) Director: David Frankel, Tom Hanks, David Leland, Richard Loncraine, David Nutter, Phil Alden Robinson, Mikael Salomon, Tony To Writer: Stephen Ambrose (book), Erik Jendresen, Tom Hanks, John Orloff, E. Max Frye, Graham Yost, Bruce C. McKenna, Tagline: There Was A Time When The World Asked Ordinary Men To Do Extraordinary Things. Cast: Damien Lewis, Donnie Wahlberg, David Schwimmer....complete cast Genre: War/Drama
Most memorable quote: "The heroes have crosses above their heads, the ones that are buried in the cemeteries. Those are the true heroes, not us. We're just part of the works, that's all. And we thank God we got back alive."
First of all, I realize that my commentary about Band of Brothers is quite lengthy, and for that I apologize. But I feel I would be doing a great disservice to the Band of Brothers experience by not being as thorough as possible.
Experiencing Band of Brothers starts not in the battlefields of Europe, nor in Camp Toccoa, Georgia. It begins in your hand, with the classically beautiful packaging of the 10 episode, six disc DVD set that is housed in a metal tin that at first glance resembles a military I.D. dog tag. With sepia-tone printing and logo embossing that emulates photography of the period, the tin opens up to reveal an accordion style pull out of all six discs and a table of contents printed in the inside of the front cover. It would only make sense to house a story of such humanity and historical import in such a well-designed package. It's almost as if you are opening a time capsule of sorts, that reveals the story of a dieing generation of Americans. Just another example of the attention to detail that makes the Band of Brothers experience so riveting.
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have, on the heels of the success of 1998's Saving Private Ryan, collaborated once again to produce an HBO original television series that immortalizes the true events and actions of American soldiers in their campaign across northern Europe to destroy Hitler's reign of terror. They bring to life the writing of Stephen Ambrose, an author and biographical historian who has also written about Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower. With the largest budget to date for a television mini-series, over $120 million, Band of Brothers is a story of grandiose proportions that is one of the most moving and humbling video experiences in my life. What amount of money would be considered too high a cost to justify the documentation of a generation of Americans who risked everything, including their lives, so that generations to follow could live in peace and freedom? Don't even try to mention to me, the ramifications of an over-bloated budget and precedent setting expenditures. I just won't listen.
Despite its total runtime of over ten hours, Band of Brothers does not provide an all-engrossing look at the American military campaign in Northern Europe during World War II. Rather, it tells the true-life story of the soldiers of Company E of the 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The fighters of Easy Company. The HBO series featured 10 episodes, each beginning with interviews of anonymous living members of Easy Company recounting a short memory or experience of the events that would be covered in that episode. From the first episode that covers the soldiers' training at Camp Toccoa in Georgia, to the final episode where the men of Easy Company capture Hitler's infamous Alpine Lair known as The Eagle's Nest, we follow the soldiers battle by battle through their D-Day landing behind enemy lines in France, through Holland, Belgium and on into Germany. I watched all ten episodes on DVD and hereby proclaim them to be of superior quality both in audio and video properties. The blacks are deep and rich with no noticeable compression artifacting and the audio is ear shattering with bombs exploding in all directions, and bullets snapping past your ears in a frightful display of what it must be like to be in battle. During battle sequences, the camera operator switches from dolly and crane mounted cameras to actual hand-held cameras, giving a frantic first-person view of diving into foxholes and jumping behind trees and windows. The film is bleached out and highly polarized, giving it a soul-searing drab and gray realism.
The last disc in the series not only contains the final episode but also contains a wonderful documentary, We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company. It includes archive footage of Easy Company, and features interviews of the actual surviving members, recounting their experiences in many of the campaigns. One particularly moving piece was the revisit by two surviving Easy Company members to the Ardennes forest on the outskirts of Foy, Belgium where Easy Company had held the line against the Germans in what would later become known to military historians as The Battle of the Bulge. You could see the memories and the horrors of the battle resurface on their weathered faces as they looked out over the now peaceful and picturesque Belgian countryside. It was difficult to form a mental comparison of the forest as it is today when compared to what happened back then. The forest literally exploded with artillery and bombs as the Germans surrounded Bastogne.
I've always marveled at 1998's Saving Private Ryan and have it earmarked as one of my favorite movies of all time. Especially the opening hour that covers the D-Day landing sequence. I wondered how we would ever get a more realistic accounting of fighting in WWII. Spielberg has done it again with Band of Brothers. Although, as is the case with almost all war movies, it is a bit difficult at first to discern the identities of different soldiers and to become familiar with their personalities, but I quickly fell in line and buddied-up with favorite characters.
From this day to the ending of the world,
...we in it shall be remembered,
...we band of brothers. -William Shakespeare
Following is a description of each episode:
Currahee: Training and Deployment Camp Toccoa, Georgia. Summer, 1942. A diverse group of young American men begin their voluntary training in one of America's newest military experiments: the paratroops. Their unit, Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, is commanded
by the petty, autocratic Lt. HERBERT SOBEL (David Schwimmer). His job is to turn these eager civilians into the U.S. Army's most elite soldiers. But Sobel fails to win the respect of his men, and a rivalry emerges between him and a junior officer, Lt. DICK WINTERS (Damian Lewis). Winters' best friend, Lt. LEWIS NIXON (Ron Livingston), becomes an intelligence officer and tells Winters their first combat assignment will be to invade occupied Europe. Training for this mission in England, Sobel continues to harass Winters by citing him for failing to inspect a latrine. When Winters requests a trial by court martial, the sergeants in the company decide to turn in their stripes rather than lose Winters and have to follow Sobel into combat. Their Commanding Officer, Col. ROBERT SINK (Dale Dye), upbraids them for this, but decides to transfer Sobel out of the company before the upcoming D-day mission. The episode ends as the company -- Winters included -- board planes headed for Normandy.
Day of Days: Campaign in Normandy Planes carrying thousands of paratroopers cross the English Channel into French airspace, where German flak causes the pilots to drop them in a less than safe and organized fashion. Lt. WINTERS lands alone in a field, soon joined by a Pvt.
JOHN HALL (Andrew Scott) from another company. Having lost his rifle in the jump, Winters leads the anxious Hall off to find their units, carrying only a knife. They link up with a few more Easy Company men and ambush a German horse-drawn supply convoy. In a nearby town, Winters finds Easy's Lt. "BUCK" COMPTON (Neal McDonough), who tells him 90% of the company is unaccounted for, including their commander -- which puts Winters in charge. Winters is then asked to lead an attack on a cluster of German artillery pieces nearby, which are probably firing onto the seaborne infantry trying to take Utah Beach. Winters deploys his small group on the entrenched enemy positions and eventually takes four artillery pieces in succession, disabling them with TNT. The euphoria is tempered, however, when Winters finds Pvt. Hall dead, killed by machine gun fire. The mission is successful, but Winters has lost his first man as acting
Carentan: Campaign in Carentan: Two days after D-day, some members of Easy Company are still lost and alone in Normandy, including Pvt. ALBERT BLITHE (Marc Warren). He finds the rest of the unit just in time to help them take the town of Carentan, which Allied armor from Utah and Omaha beaches need in order to link up. During the successful fight for the town, Easy suffers several casualties, including a minor leg wound to Lt. WINTERS, and a case of "hysterical blindness" for Blithe. The company moves out to set up a defensive position and runs into a German counterattack on the way. They engage in a lengthy firefight, which eventually includes German and then American tanks. Blithe, after getting advice and encouragement from Lts. HARRY WELSH (Rick Warden), RONALD SPEIRS (Matthew Settle), and Winters, screws up his courage enough to stand up in his foxhole and fire his rifle at the enemy, eventually killing a German. But the next day, on a patrol, Blithe is shot in the neck by a sniper, a wound he will never recover from. The company returns to England after 36 days in Normandy, but their celebrations are short-lived, as news comes that they will be moving out again.
Replacements: Campaign in Holland I A group of fresh replacements joins Easy Company in time for a massive paradrop into German-occupied Holland. The Dutch townspeople of Eindhoven welcome them as liberators. But when Easy and a cluster of British tanks move into a nearby town, they are met by a superior German force and must retreat after suffering many casualties. One of these is Sgt. "BULL" RANDLEMAN (Michael Cudlitz), who hides out overnight in a barn. A Dutch farmer and his daughter tend to him, and eventually he has to bayonet and bury a German soldier who wanders in. Meanwhile, Randleman's friends and the members of the squad he leads fear him dead, and finally decide to head back into the town to try to find him. He escapes the barn and meets them on the way, finally returning to the company and getting a warm welcome. As they move onto another assignment in Holland, Capt. WINTERS laments having to retreat, and Capt. NIXON tells him the ambitious allied operation in Holland looks to have failed.
Crossroads: Campaign in Holland II Capt. WINTERS leads a contingent of Easy Company men on a risky mission over a Dutch dike that results in a "turkey shoot" of fleeing German soldiers. Afterwards, Col. SINK promotes him to Battalion Executive Officer, leaving Easy Co. in the hands of Lt. "MOOSE" HEYLIGER (Stephen McCole). As Winters labors over a report on the dike mission, Heyliger leads a rescue of some British soldiers escaping from the besieged town of Arnhem. Winters is dissatisfied by his new, largely administrative job. He worries about Easy, now one of three companies he helps command, especially after Heyliger is shot and seriously wounded by a nervous sentry. After moving back off the line to France, Lt. NIXON insists that Winters take a break and see Paris. Winters is haunted there by the memory of a young German solider he killed at close range on the dike. As he returns to the company at Mourmelon, news comes in of a massive German counterattack in the Ardennes Forest. Winters helps Easy race there to hold the line, his men ill-equipped for the cold weather and the battle ahead.
Bastogne: Campaign in Bastogne Easy Company digs foxholes in the snow around the Belgian town of Bastogne. They are woefully under-manned and under-supplied to hold the line against the inevitable German armored attack. Medic EUGENE ROE (Shane Taylor) scrounges morphine and other much-needed medical supplies to treat the various ailments and wounds of the men, who are bitterly cold and, in many cases, stricken with trench foot. His travels take him to a cut-off Aid Station in the surrounded, besieged town of Bastogne. There he meets a beautiful Belgian nurse named RENEE LEMAIRE (Lucie Jeanne) ministering to the horrible suffering of wounded American soldiers. Easy loses two men on an ill-fated patrol but are congratulated on Christmas Day for holding the line by Col. SINK. He reads aloud their commanding general's concise, defiant response to a German surrender demand: "Nuts!" With no sign of relief in sight, the men celebrate a miserable holiday together in their foxholes. The Germans bomb Bastogne, hitting the Aid Station and killing Renee, whose body Roe discovers.
The Breaking Point: Campaign in Foy Having held off the German attempts to overrun Bastogne, Easy is now faced with the task of taking the nearby town of Foy from the enemy. Company First Sergeant CARWOOD LIPTON (Donnie Wahlberg) tries to hold the company together as they withstand several fierce artillery bombardments, during which several Easy veterans are killed and maimed. Sgts. JOE TOYE (Kirk Acevedo) and BILL GUARNERE (Frank John Hughes) each lose a leg. This precipitates an emotional breakdown by Lt. COMPTON, who has to leave the line. Morale is further dampened by the incompetence of their commander, Lt. NORMAN DIKE (Peter O'Meara). Lipton warns Capt. WINTERS about Dike, but Winters is well aware of the problem and can do nothing about it. But when Dike freezes up during the crucial attack on Foy, Winters sends Dog Company's Lt. SPEIRS to relieve him. Speirs successfully leads the taking of the town, and Lipton is happy that Easy finally has a true combat leader again.
The Patrol: Campaign in Hagenau With the war perhaps winding down, Easy Company is trucked into an Alsacian town near the German border. Still on the front line, the men get to sleep in houses, just across a small river from German forces doing the same thing. They are asked to send a patrol across the river to take some Germans prisoner, an assignment no one wants to be picked from. Except Lt. HANK JONES (Colin Hanks), fresh in from West Point and eager for combat experience. He's put in charge of 2nd platoon, alongside Sgt. DON MALARKEY (Scott Grimes), still broken up about losing so many friends at Bastogne. When Malarkey is picked to lead the patrol, Jones asks to go in his place, and Capt. WINTERS okays it. Also getting the call is Pvt. DAVID WEBSTER (Eion Bailey), our narrator, returning to the company after having missed all of Bastogne for a relatively minor wound. He finds it's not so easy to gain the acceptance of his old buddies. In the end, the patrol is successful in retrieving two prisoners, but Easy loses a man killed. Weighing this, Winters disobeys an order to send a second patrol the next night.
Why We Fight: Campaign in Landsberg Easy Company finally enters Germany, where they find no resistance, and begin kicking residents out of their homes for the night so they can sleep. They find the "enemy" to be industrious and not much different from them, and the veterans enjoy a chance to relax and even "fraternize" with the locals. Maj. WINTERS is concerned about his friend Capt. NIXON, who returns from a disastrous combat jump with another unit, cynical about the war and drinking heavily. After getting news that President Roosevelt has died, Easy heads out to another German town, from which Winters sends a small patrol into a forest. The patrol finds an abandoned concentration camp, with hundreds of emaciated and still imprisoned inmates, mostly Jewish -- a surprise to Winters and everyone else. They start to feed and release them, but then are ordered to herd them back into the camp so that their recovery can be monitored. As they supervise the cleanup of the camp and its many corpses by the disgusted local citizenry -- who disavow prior knowledge of its existence -- they get the news that Hitler has killed himself.
Points: Taking of Hitler's Nest Easy Company enters the empty Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, once home to all the chiefs of the Third Reich. They celebrate the German army's surrender in Hitler's mountaintop "Eagle's Nest," then proceed to scenic Austria. There, they learn that the Division will be redeployed to the Pacific Theatre, minus any men who have earned enough "points" to go home. Few of them have. As they await official orders to leave Europe, Maj. WINTERS applies for a transfer to a unit that is moving out immediately but is denied the request. Meanwhile, the violence continues in Austria, including an execution of a suspected labor camp commandant, and the critical wounding of Sgt. CHUCK GRANT (Nolan Hemmings) by a drunken trooper from another company. Capt. SPEIRS, dealing with all of this, decides to stay on as company commander despite having enough points to go home. But Winters will not make a career of the army: he accepts Capt. NIXON's offer of a job with his family's company. As Winters gives news of the Japanese surrender to the company on a baseball field in Austria, we learn what happened to each of the men after the war.
We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, young men from all walks of life flooded recruiting offices to defend their country. Some volunteered for a daring new elite unit the paratroops. Formed in July 1942, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army molded civilians into soldiers at Camp Toccoa, Ga. But only a fraction of those who started training were able to finish it, and those who did were "the cream of the cream." In September 1943, after 15 months of training, Easy Co. and their fellow paratroopers boarded the ship Samaria in New York for the long voyage to England; some veterans recall wondering, as they passed the Statue of Liberty, if theyd ever see it again. Many Easy Co. men would not over the next two years, the unit sustained 150% casualties as they dropped behind enemy lines in Normandy on D-Day, fought for the liberation of Holland, held the line in the Battle of the Bulge, and captured Hitlers mountaintop retreat, Eagles Nest, in Bavaria. Through it all, each veteran recalls that his reliance on his brothers-in-arms is the reason any of them made it back alive. For their repeated acts of courage and bravery, the entire division, as well as individual soldiers, earned multiple citations, including the Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Distinguished Service Cross. In 1998 and 1999, director-producer Mark Cowen and writer-producer Will Richter had been going over ideas for a World War II documentary, and subsequently became aware of the "Band of Brothers" miniseries project during a pitch meeting with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzmans production company, Playtone. Cowen proposed seeking out veterans of Easy Co. for background research for the miniseries, and making a companion documentary. They initially contacted former company commander Richard Winters and veteran Bill Guarnere, both of whom had been responsible over the years for keeping track of other veterans. Winters and Guarnere spread the word among their comrades, and for the next two years, Cowen and his crew travelled to 30 U.S. and ten European cities, as well as to annual Easy Co. reunions, creating an "on-camera oral history" of Easy Co., comprising stories not in historian Stephen E. Ambroses book, and in many cases, never told to the veterans own families. Cowen also accompanied veterans Guarnere and "Babe" Heffron on their emotional return to the forest battlefield at Bastogne, where Easy held the line REAL-LIFE VETERANS 3 in the Battle of the Bulge and Guarnere lost his leg. All told, Cowen shot almost 200 hours of interviews with 44 veterans, and some of their family members. "This has been a life-changing experience," says Cowen. "It wasnt just a project." More than half a century after World War II, the bonds shared by the men of Easy Co. remain strong. "You know those people better than you will ever know anybody in your life," notes veteran Shifty Powers. Every year since 1946, they and their families gather for a reunion, reaffirming their unique ties to each other. As for Easy Companys legacy, veteran C. Carwood Lipton asserts, "Every army unit thinks it's the best. But we knew we were the best."
Sound: English: DTS 5.1 Surround, English: Dolby Digital 5.1, English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Other Features: Color; interactive menus; scene access; making-of featurette; documentary; video diaries; premiere footage; interactive timeline and field guide; photo gallery; DVD-ROM features. return to top
Band of Brothers (2001)
