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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
23
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It is doubtful that any war movie on the large or small screen has captured the varied experiences of ordinary soldiers better than Band of Brothers. Whether it's the sheer terror of facing an unseen enemy or the momentary joy following a successful mission, the mini eschews the typical movie cliches while revealing and reveling in the humanity within each member of Easy Company. It explains in large measure why this group of regular guys and others like them have come to be called the Greatest Generation. [5 Sept 2001]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers is significantly flawed and yet absolutely extraordinary -- just like the men it portrays. [7 Sept 2001, p.1E]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Remarkable on many levels - as an interpretation of history, spotlighting what many consider to be the defining event of the 20th century, and as a tribute to heroism. Emotional and starkly realistic, it's not an easy 10 hours of television...The film also is notable as a collection of superb performances and, pragmatically, as an unimaginably expensive television production: $ 120 million. [6 Sept 2001, p.F-03]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
After watching the 10-hour Band of Brothers, I'm so drained by the intensity of what I have just beheld that I'm ready to declare this World War II miniseries the finest piece of work ever produced for television. [7 Sept 2001, p.117]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
May be the best-ever film depiction of war in the trenches, large screen or small, and TV's loftiest miniseries since the Brits sent over "The Jewel in the Crown" in 1984. Give Band of Brothers a medal. [7 Sept 2001, p.C1]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
An amazing accomplishment. It refrains from emotional manipulation (unlike Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan"). All 10 parts portray human nature as it is - mixed motives, conflicting impulses. It earns every emotion it inspires in us. If it is heartening, it's because it defies cynicism and reveals the realities of courage, compassion, and brotherhood as real men in a horrendous war practiced it. [7 Sept 2001, p.15]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's an extraordinary achievement, particularly since the miniseries ended up involving seven directors, including Hanks, and six writers. There is an inevitable difference in tone between the episodes, but "Band" never wavers from its vision of re-creating the experience of war through the eyes of average soldiers. [9 Sept 2001, p.3E]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Over nine weeks and 10 hours, this extraordinary television event
looks for humanity in the midst of carnage and despair. Time and time
again, Band of Brothers finds it. [9 Sept 2001, p.11]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
A perceptive, powerful, five-star achievement in HBO's continuing championship season...Saluting it is a singular honor and privilege.[9 Sept 2001, p.3]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The best miniseries in the history of television..."Roots" remains the most important miniseries ever in terms of its impact on our culture--but for overall quality and artistic reach, Band of Brothers is a superior piece of work. I've seen virtually every major theatrical film released this year, but I'm not sure any of them has resonated with me in the way that Band of Brothers has. [9 Sept 2001, p.6]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
This is television taking us on a journey into shared memory and the national past. This is television near the top of its game as the Great American Storyteller telling us who we were at one of our finest hours and, so, reminding us of what can be. [9 Sept 2001, p.2E]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
There have been many great war films, and any number that have vividly evoked the tension, tragedy and terror of battle. But due to the exceptional amount of time lavished on this story, the fluid manner in which men come and go and the drastic changes that mark them, it's doubtful that any film or TV venture has ever come close to "Brothers" in presenting "What Men Went Through" over the long haul. [4 Sept 2001, p.6]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It doesn't even look like a TV miniseries -- it's more like 10 theatrical films that do an amazing job re-creating battles. [7 Sept 2001, p.W01]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers is absolutely repellent. Obscene. Unsettling. And, if you've got the stuff to stick with it, some of the most instructive TV you'll see this year. [8 Sept 2001, p.E1]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers could use a little more humor, a bit more of the irreverence and profanity that frequently arises in groups of men alone, to break up its almost unrelievedly somber atmosphere. If Spielberg and Hanks have erred, it is not in taking the men of Easy Company seriously, but in taking themselves and their film too seriously. [7 Sept 2001, p.E-1]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers stands as a very satisfying adaptation of Ambrose's meticulous and engrossing account. [9 Sept 2001, p.61]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers may be the best film ever made to show the everlasting bond forged in war between ordinary men...It may also be the best film ever made to show the relentlessness and horror of war. Aurally and visually, it's as graphically real as the battle scenes of Saving Private Ryan, only Band is five times longer...Still, there's something stopping me from saying this is the best war movie ever made, and that is because Band of Brothers succeeds as a whole, but fails to be as interesting in its individual installments. [9 Sept 2001, p.2]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers isn't a great work. It is above all an act of tribute, and perhaps that prevents it from possessing the independence of the greatest films about war. But it is an honorable project, and one of the definitive film treatments of World War II. It brings a new honesty and depth to the way we remember that terrible war, and the boys from Chicago and Louisiana and Montana and New York who fought and won it for us. Without illusions. With abiding respect.
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The production is so technically expert that it's agonizing to watch. And with the emphasis on authenticity, there's almost none of the tension that usually moves drama along. To get through it all, viewers will need to be almost as committed to Band of Brothers as the soldiers were to fighting the war. [9 Sept 2001, p.H01]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Early on, Band of Brothers is more methodical, less emotional due to its large, unwieldy cast. Once the uniformed soldiers put their helmets on, it's tough to tell them apart. If you're like me, you'll spend too much time trying to figure out who just got killed to work up much sympathy for the mystery victim. [9 Sept 2001, p.TV-5]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Some episodes and moments have such undeniable dramatic power that you may weep; others may just leave you scratching your head. [9 Sept 2001, p.1]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Band of Brothers thus finds itself in a tricky no- man's land. It's too colloquial and too specific to be valuable in a larger historical sense, like the classic "World at War" series or any of the World War II documentaries that are a History Channel staple. Yet, it's too lacking in dramatic focal points to succeed fully as entertainment like "Private Ryan" or any of the dozens of World War II movies ("Battle Cry," "Battleground") that Hollywood turned out in the late 1940s and '50s. [7 Sept 2001, p.B02]
Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Television doesn't get any more visceral than this, and you will not soon forget images of the sky exploding into a rainstorm of parachutes, planes, and fire over Normandy, or American soldiers stumbling across a German death camp tucked in the forest...But as episodic television storytelling, Band of Brothers is less successful, marred not only by loose plot threads and war cliches but also by an excess of indistinct characters. [7 Dec 2001, p.C1]
Aug 14, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Not knowing the characters better and not being able to tell them apart are constant hindrances. Weak on the human dimension, Band of Brothers adds up to a punishing experience. [9 Sept 2001, p.4]
Jun 28, 2013
Season 1 Review:
This is war as it happened, brutal and random, and in re-creating it Brothers captures viscerally the extraordinary sacrifice of a generation of ordinary men. ... But unlike [Saving Private Ryan], which bared its fictional GIs' souls, Brothers fatally neglects to turn its cast into distinguishable characters.
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Aug 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
A glorious bungle. It has been produced on a dauntingly massive scale (by no less than Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, those old war hands) and is at times visually astonishing...Unfortunately it also suffers from disorganization, muddled thinking and a sense of redundancy. [8 Sept 2001, p.C01]
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