The Thin Red Line

Know a hardcore anti-war nut? This movie is for them. Thin Red Line is definitely not a movie that honors men like my neighbor who lied about his age to join the military in WWII. It tries the disguise of being artsy in order to brand the men who fought for our freedoms as cowards and psychopaths. This movie was a waste of my time, a waste of my money, and a waste of resources. I should have known what the result of movie would be, considering the cast. So, to the director, quit having your actors emote so much. To the writer, please visit with those who serve. You may learn that they are men who just do their job and dont ask for anything else.

Terrence Malick's name is synonymous with his visionary films Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), and The New World (2005)--four of the best films I have ever seen. Based on the James Jones' novel, The Thin Red Line tells a fictional World War II story which examines the young soldiers of C Company, focusing primarily on Private Witt (Jim Caviezel), who has gone AWOL from his unit and is living among natives in the South Pacific, Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), who is driven to win the Battle of the Japanese-controlled Guadalcanal Island, and Private Bell (Ben Chaplin), who is haunted by his failing marriage back home. The film also features an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Adrien Brody, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, Jared Leto, John Travolta and Sean Penn. (Other performances by Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Jason Patric, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke were left on the cutting-room floor during editing.) Hardly a traditional war film, Malick's Thin Red Line is more of a three-hour meditation on life, death, God, and courage amidst the futility of war. For Malick, there is a thin line between war and poetry. John Toll's cinematography is mesmerizing. It languishes over flora and fauna as much as the action scenes. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound Mixing. This film is transcendent.

G. Merritt

Yes, that's right. "The Thin Red Line" is the greatest war movie ever made. So said Gene Siskel, and so say I. It's miles ahead of "Saving Private Ryan" and just noses out "Full Metal Jacket" and "Apocalypse Now" for the crown.

The cinematography is breathtaking, the directing inspired, the acting first-rate. The ensemble cast pulls off a miracle - simultaneously portraying the horrors of war and the subtlety and quiet mystery of the human mind.

The script blends action and philosophy (!) in a way few films would even attempt, and does so with an ease that staggers the mind. This movie deserved every one of its seven Academy Award nominations.

I left the theater stunned and speechless after watching "The Thin Red Line", but my mind was racing. The same feeling came back yet again upon viewing this DVD.

Buy it, and enjoy the greatest war film ever made. A landmark cinematic achievement. Five stars!

I've read all of these ramblings about military detail flaws, and unrealistic truths. 'My uncle/father/etc was at Guadecanal Canal', therefore I am the true judge of a good movie. Thats utterly false. A good movie gets a reaction. It gets under your nerves enough(even if you don't like it) to go over to the computer and write a 2 paragraph well thought out response. Well, there are plenty of those ... plenty! So truth be told this movie is brilliant. Its message is of humanity with all its glory and beauty shining through. Its about goodness, friendship and love weighed againts the twisting vines of war, desperation and lonliness. Its about finding a spark within the individual, to acknowledge evils, acknowledge death, but to rise above it. The setting of Guadecanal is no more 'the story' for the Thin Red Line than Vietnam is the setting for Apocolpyse Now. Its just the netting that holds the true meaning of the movie in check. Now granted, if you don't like poetic, beautiful, meandering movies this might not be your thing, but to not like this movie because its 'anti-war' or not factual enough is completly missing the point.

Another film on the US-Japan war in the Pacific, will you say. Of course, you'd be right but of course you are wrong. It is a film about any war waged by the US in any foreign country. That's the first point and it reveals so clearly the absurdity of the tactical thinking of some officers who see the war they are taking part in as a springboard for their egotistic self-satisfied career, and their men are nothing but pawns that have to be moved, by force most of the time, and not the force of rational arguments. Hence, if you have a bunker at the top of a hill, you do not go around to attack it from the flank or even from behind. You just run up the bare slope of that hill under the fire of their machine guns, and you take it. The men must do that. The commanding officer will of course go last, and most probably will come last to certify the work of the men. The second element is that this film shows how the minds of the soldiers still go on and they mix news from home and the famous letters from their wives who are asking for a divorce, and secretly hoping that will not be necessary. And the film reveals how deep the breach, the cut, the rip, or even the abyss is between life on the front and life back home, between the present and what is and can only be the past. Life back home has no future as long as the war goes on. The film is an absolutely fascinating denunciation of the psychological but also spiritual destruction a war is for any soldier who is de-structured and will have to rebuild his own personal psyche, structure, social being, human being, life in one word, afterwards. Third, the film shows the ugliness of war, the dirt, the blood, the din or even the blaring roaring noise, the mud, the physical suffering and death in the name of the fatherland or the motherland, the physical torture that is imposed onto you, that you impose onto yourself, or that you impose onto the others. The best example is how a captain who resisted the silly order of the colonel and whose resistance is shown as perfectly sane since it brings victory and the economy of a few deaths, is nevertheless sent back to the US, with a medal, but in the most disgraceful way: to get him out of the tramping feet of the colonel who is a pure fascist. All in all this film applies to the second world war the discourse we are used to hearing about the Vietnam war and it convincingly shows that all wars are bad, inhuman, inhumane, purely non-human, cruel, absurd, and probably aimless. It could and anyway should have been avoided. A war is for each soldier a loss of virginity, purity, happiness, promised rewards. "They want you to die or to lie with them." And that's all. That bunch of killing, deadly, fatal, lethal lies lead the soldier to looking for another dimension in the world, some god, transcending force that can wrap you up in its arms in a totally sexless and purely spiritual comforting gesture that makes you go on, on the war path of the limited political ambitions of those who govern us. In a war there is no power of the people, for the people and by the people but only power of the politicians for themselves and by themselves. A war, any war is a total loss of freedom.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines