An Excellent Documentary
Much is expected from a modern-day documentary. No more are dry, monologued narations over dull archival footage acceptable. The typical documentaries of old either put you to sleep or made you feel as if you were in the class room of that teacher from the wonder years. You had to really love the material to enjoy it, and even then, you would watch it soley for the information it contained, but even then the poor quality of presentation was obvious.

Now-a-days documentary making has taken a differnt turn, turning over the other end of the spectrum. Now history channel specials can be too mainstream, focusing too much on melo-drama and entertainment and not enough on content. But some documentaries are getting it right - with plenty of information, depth, objectivity, and just delivering it all with stylistic flair appropriate to the content. "The Korean War: Our Time in Hell" is a perfect example of the perfect documentary.

The Korean War is worthy of such a documentary. It was America's first "undeclared war". It was the first use of the United Nations as a tool to preserving world peace and stabillity - having a UN sanctioned force effectively reverse an invasion of a soveriegn nation by a neighboring power and reinstall it's government. It was a precursor to vietname and the other conflicts to follow and marked a transition from the paradigm of warfare we had kept in the two world wars towards the "limited wars" that would take place in the second half of the 20th century. This of course was a result of nuclear weapons having been introduced to the world in 1945 and the horrible prospects a 3rd world war could have.

It was also one of the closest moments the US came to a 3rd world war with China and the Soviet Union, and probably the Closest America has come to using Nuclear weapons. It was in Korea that the US realised that nuclear weapons were not just weapons in the arsenal to be used in a conflict, but weapons of deterence - and from here on mutually assured destruction would be US policy. It was a massive war that began with a blitzkreig speed invasion of overwhelming force, then was miraculously and decisively turned by one single manuever (the invasion of inchon) and then completely reversed again by the entrance of the 200,000 chinese into the war, and finally reverse one last time by the american 8th army to end up back the the 43rd parallel where it all began.

Yet Korea takes a place alongside the war of 1812 as one of America's "forgoten wars". This documentary looks at the strategic moves, the political motives, the carnage, the suffering, the failures, and the successes of the war. It looks at the bigger than life characters involved - Douglas Macarther, Kim Il Sung, Harry Truman, and Mao Tse Tung. It's packed with information and is done in a dramatic stylized way as to really underline what was at stake here. It also gives excellent naration, plenty of interviews with soldiers and is both entertaining while remaining extremely informative. Probably the best Korean War documentary I've seen.