After the carnage of the Bears' loss on Sunday Night Football to the Dallas Caballeros, The Hound should have known better than to watch fillm maker Ken Burns' latest opus, "The War." After watching it for a few minutes, The Hound had to ask: What's so new here we haven't seen before?
It's not like we don't know what happened in World War II and it's like Burns never saw "World at War", "Victory at Sea", the "Battleline" series on The History Channel or even glanced at any of The Military Channel's offering, such as "World War II Battlefront" or "20th century Battlefields". Did he even watch "Saving Private Ryan"? It took six years to produce this 15-hour mini-series?
Of course, as befitting Burns, "The War" is well-crafted film and interesting to history junkies, but do we really need another World War II storytelling? Perhaps so to honor the men who served who are reaching the end of their warranty. But still, they know what they did and generally, so does the nation.
There's a war going on now that Burns could have made into compelling television. The Military Channel happens to be doing it with "My War Diary" and "Iraq Diary". Television viewers would be better served with a Burns treatment of the Iraq situation than revisiting World War II.
Leave a comment