Band of Brothers

Taistelutoverit (2001) 

Fantastic work! The creators took the best of Saving Private Ryan (a naturalistic and technically brilliant depiction of the war), got rid of the disgusting patriotic pathos, and focused their series on believable flesh-and-blood characters who make mistakes and behave like real people. The narrative concept, in which each episode focuses on a different point of view and pays attention to different characters, is initially confusing, but once you get used to a few key faces, Band of Brothers becomes a truly addictive affair. The image of war is appropriately harsh, immediate and indeed brilliantly transmitted through the eye of the camera to the viewer's brain. The perfectionism of the camera and the direction is astonishing, and even though we have already seen most of the tricks in Spielberg's war tale, it is only in Band of Brothers that it truly feels immediate. Michael Kamen's majestic music is also excellent, and of course the screenwriters deserve maximum recognition, who managed to mesh the seemingly disparate war images into a completely coherent whole and create the potential for film images as powerful as the miniature love story of the medic and the French nurse in Bastogne. Band of Brothers is not just a spectacular experience, it is also a supremely impressive portrait of war suffering and everyday heroism... (23.05.2006)