Documentary Review: 'The Korean War: Fire and Ice'
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| ©2010 A&E Television Networks. Content © 1999 Lou Reda Productions and A&E Television Networks |
Produced by Lou Reda and written by Rod Paschall, The Korean War: Fire and Ice mixes archival footage (both color and black-and-white) from the archives of several nations and 1990s interviews with historians, former diplomats, and U.S. Korean War veterans. Though much of the archival footage is combat footage, there are also shots of non-battle events, such as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's 1949 meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, the deliberations at the UN Headquarters in New York in June 1950, and other related events.
The Korean War was a war of firsts: the first jet war; the first war where it was not possible to unleash full power, politically or militarily; and the first battlefield of the Cold War. Lasting three years, it took more than 2,000,000 military and civilian lives in its wake. Setting all the rules for East/West conflict during the nuclear age brought an unknowing world closer to an all-out atomic war than has ever been told. Historians, battle veterans, and archival footage reveal the pain, glory, and pathos of the war. - DVD back cover blurb, The Korean War: Fire and Ice.
Narrated by the late Edward Herrmann (an actor who narrated so many documentaries that he earned the nickname "The History Channel Guy"), the series is divided into four parts:
- The Making of a Blood Bath
- Triumph to Tragedy
- Retreat from Hell
- Bitter Standoff
In DVD format, each episode has a runtime of around 50 minutes; the entire series has a total running time of 200 minutes.
My Take
If you are familiar with the documentaries produced by the late Lou Reda (a documentarian who was reputably the largest producer of content for A&E Networks until his death in 2017), you know more or less what you're going to get in The Korean War: Fire and Ice: a utilitarian film that's not so badly made that you will never watch it more than once, yet doesn't quite reach the lofty levels of cinematic quality you'd expect from Ken Burns or Jeremy Isaacs.
Filmed in the late 1990s and using a lot of archival footage, The Korean War: Fire and Ice bears the hallmarks of a film made on a limited budget. All of the interviewees are American; there are no Korean (North or South) veterans or historians on screen. There are also no Chinese or any U.S.-allied individuals seen here, either, except, of course, in the archival footage. Most of the participants are middle-aged men, most of whom (including Bevin Alexander, Edwin H. Simmons, and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor) served during the war as enlisted men or junior officers.
The archival footage suffers from uneven quality. Some of it is in remarkably good shape and includes a mix of black & white and color film. Some of it is in rather a poor condition, especially those segments that were found in old national archives in Moscow, Beijing, Seoul, or Washington, DC.
And while Herrmann's voiceover performance as the narrator is excellent, the music is generic made-for-TV stuff credited not to a composer but one of those television music studios in New York City.
All in all, The Korean War: Fire and Ice is a watchable if not quite memorable documentary about a war no one really remembers, even though current events in North Korea stem from that 1950-1953 "police action." It covers the basic facts of Korea well enough to serve as a primer to a war that unhappily occurred between the triumph of World War II and the tragedy of the Vietnam War. As such, I recommend it, especially to younger viewers who may be unfamiliar even with M*A*S*H, one of the few popular culture franchises that depict the war. But if you're looking for a more in-depth look at the "forgotten war," you're better off reading David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.
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