THE opening credits of ''Band of Brothers'' captures the pretty romanticism of war-in-the-movies. Parachutes cascade slowly to the ground, soldiers move in gauzy stop-action, lyrical music floats in the background, and HBO's expensive, enormous miniseries about an American parachute unit in World War II gets off to a disheartening start. The world doesn't need one more knee-jerk paean to the greatest generation.

But this misleading introduction soon gives way to the visceral horror of war. When the soldiers of Easy Company parachute into Normandy on D-Day, the noise in their planes is deafening, the jostling camera captures the frenzy and adrenaline of the moment, flames shoot through the fuselage of a plane that has been shot, and even as the men fall to earth they are dodging enemy fire. That scene at the start of Episode 2 (the second of this Sunday's back-to-back installments) signals the true beginning of ''Band of Brothers,'' an extraordinary 10-part series that masters its greatest challenge: it balances the ideal of heroism with the violence and terror of battle, reflecting what is both civilized and savage about war.

Based on the historian Stephen E. Ambrose's best seller, ''Band of Brothers'' follows a parachute infantry unit (Company E, known as Easy) on a real-life journey of such scope that it seems fit for Forrest Gump. After leaping onto Utah Beach on D-Day and destroying a German garrison, the men take part in a misbegotten attempt to reach Germany through the Netherlands (Operation Market-Garden), move to Belgium where they shiver in foxholes during brutal shelling in the Battle of the Bulge, and in the final days of the war capture the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's mountaintop fortress near Austria. No wonder the series cost $120 million, a record-breaking, well-spent amount that doesn't include its promotion.

The promotion machine has let everyone know by now that Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who first teamed up for war in ''Saving Private Ryan,'' are the series's executive producers. Mr. Hanks does not appear in ''Band of Brothers,'' but he directed the fifth episode and is a co-writer of the first. Mr. Spielberg did not direct a single one, but his fingerprints are everywhere. The powerful stylistic influence of ''Private Ryan'' gives coherence to a series with eight directors. ''Band of Brothers'' keeps what is best about ''Private Ryan'' -- the claustrophobic sense of being trapped in relentless, inescapable battle -- and loses the mawkishness that undermines the movie's emotional impact.