The Thin Red Line

Spanning a running time of just short of three hours, we're taken on a journey to Guadalcanal, where American troops are landing on the sandy beaches only to encounter a foe that, for a while, seems unbeatable. Their mission: to take over an airstrip and give America an advantage in the Pacific War. It is here that the characters are established: First Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn), whose only wish is to lose all feeling for the events he experiences; Lt. Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), obsessed more with his image than with actual victory; Private Witt (Jim Caviezel), a quiet, almost spiritual soldier with a soft yet firm heart; and Private Bell (Ben Chaplin), whose memories of his wife are what fuel his drive to fulfill his mission so he may return home.

Like "Ryan," this film has intense images of graphic violence associated with war and battle. While Malick does not use the same technique as Speilberg, whose film is gritty and never without unsteady camera shots, his slow-motion captures, cut to the powerful score of Hans Zimmer, are just as moving and powerful. Scenes that stick out in the mind are the Americans' capture of a Japanese bunker on a hill, while their raiding of an enemy camp is one of the most moving pieces of cinematic masterpiece I've ever seen in any film.

The second half of the film takes us to where the real focus of the movie has been all along. After their mission is accomplished, the regiment is given a week of rest, during which time each of the characters is given a chance to reflect on the experiences of the previous day. Some of them question their own existence in the face of such brutality, while others try to cope with the fact that they have committed murder. The movie is brilliant for its ability to separate one's feeling of victory with their latter realizations of the acts they have taken part in.

One right after another, the movie brings out unheard of emotions that will stir even the hardest of cynics and critics. The images of war, people crying out for help, breathing their last, and just the frenzied, frantic bravura of it all is deeply moving, one of the best war portrayals to date. The psychological examinations are also very heartfelt, establishing the soldiers as characters, and more than mere pawns in a game of war. Each of them has a monologue that plays during the movie, their thoughts and feelings put into poetry for the screen.

While the movie is particularly preferential in its choice of which characters deserve more screen time, the performances turned in by each actor are masterpieces in themselves. Penn is forceful as the hard yet movable Welsh, while Nolte is believably stern and unrelenting as Col. Tall. Ben Chaplin is perhaps the most emotional character, Private Bell, who is haunted by thoughts of his wife back home. And Caviezel is an incredible addition to the cast as Witt, whose simplistic view of the world sets the mood for some of the movie's most powerful scenes and monologues.

Even those not partial to war films may favor the grandeur and spectacle of "The Thin Red Line." A stirring war epic and an intense journey into the mind are swirled into an engrossing movie that tugs at the heartstrings with such a grip you have no choice but to go along with it.


This is the best American film of the decade.   June 9, 1999
32 out of 37 found this review helpful

Haunting score, stunning cinematography, superb acting, a theme worthy of great art -- this is a perfect film set in a war -- with truth, love, sacrifice, compassion, fear, hope, brutality and honour as subjects. As Gene Siskel said, this is the best war film ever seen. Unlike "Saving Ryan's Privates", this is no propaganda film. No easy answers, no flag-waving, no liberal "the Japanese are just like us" nonsense, either (here, the Japanese are fully human, and distinctly themselves). I was moved by the sometimes tender, sometimes gruesome truths revealed in the course of watching ordinary men in a hopelessly chaotic circumstance -- war -- as each strives to keep from crossing the thin red line into insanity.

Malick stayed faithful to the excellent novels by James Jones, borrowing Prewitt from "From Here to Eternity" and blending him with Pvt. Witt from "The Thin Red Line" to give us Caviezel's central character, a man striving to serve his brothers, willing to kill if necessary and at the same time to be open to the pathos and horror that killing another man entails. Caviezel said he and his fellow actors felt like paint on a palette when working under Malick. The result is a wonderfully composed masterpiece which asks questions instead of giving pablum answers.

Nolte and Penn give among their very best performances, the Nolte and Koteas dialectics are the stuff of great drama, and the post-skirmish pas-de-deux between Nolte and Cusack is unsurpassed -- intense, subtle, telling.

The battle scene at the start of "Private Ryan" is stunning but ultimately it is pornographic -- we watch guys being blown up but we do so as voyeurs. In "The Thin Red Line", Malick's and John Toll's cameras place us in the midst of the men, the sea of grass, the bullets and shrapnel, the mud and gore, the birds and plant life, the thunder and smoke. We are deeply affected, not "entertained" or thrilled but stunned, jolted and transformed. Hans Zimmer's sometimes melancholy, sometimes poignant, sometimes uplifting but always unobtrusive score helps weave the fabric of this film into a fine visual, emotional, intellectual and auditory tapestry.

Some critics bemoan the nature scenery -- well, Guadalcanal is a tropical island, that's where the battle was fought, and that's what the soldiers saw, get it? Some say the film was too long -- so, get an attention span, eh? Some don't like the voice-overs, which in fact serve masterfully to let us into the hearts and minds of those waiting to fight and waiting to die. Some were offended by the fact that GIs were portrayed as being concerned with profound questions about meaning, truth, hope, God. Guess what -- ordinary people actually ARE capable of thinking about such things when facing their own mortality. And our history is replete with poet soldiers -- Horace over two millenia ago for one, and James Jones himself at Guadalcanal.

I, for one, am grateful for a film that dares to be a great work of art. Every time I've seen it -- and that's quite a few -- a fifth of the audience stays seated to the end of the credits, reverent, thinking, feeling, often weeping. Dozens of my friends from all backgrounds have gone back to see this film again and then again.

This is a rare phenomenon, and like Malick's other films, will be more fully appreciated as the years go by. More than "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven", though, this film will be timeless.


Psychodramic Babble!   November 20, 1999
Greg (Lakewood, Ohio)
32 out of 55 found this review helpful

This was the most bizarre and boring movie I've ever seen. My wife was clinically dead halfway through this movie about philosophical World War Two grunts in the South Pacific. I've never heard so much psychobabble in my life. Through the entire movie these soldiers rambled on about everything from killing the enemy to cheating wives. I was expecting a therapist to jump out of the jungle and help these tortured souls.

I have read some of the reviews and people loved it or hated it. Well I understood the story, got the point, and I thought it was a terrible movie. Weak plot, no character development, and the story moved at a tank-like pace. I hope Mr. Malick takes another 20 year coffee break.


Brilliant... An absolute Masterpiece!   February 11, 2000
John K. Reed (Harrisburg, PA United States)
26 out of 35 found this review helpful

The critics who panned this master work are very unenlightened. Granted... the movie is only going to be appreciated by those few individuals who are truly introspective, spiritually aware or those who have faced the most severe kinds of adversity in their lives. Unfortunately these characteristics are all too uncommon especially amongst Americans.

The film is an exploration at its' core of the most fundamental human emotions and motivations. Courage, love, honor, devotion, sacrifice, ambition, fear, adherence to principle, compromise, cynicism, acceptance, hope, malice, humanity, morality, and doubt just to name a few. And all of these with respect to oneself and others.

All that notwithstanding it is a brilliantly crafted film. Fabulous imagery and cinematography plus perfectly orchestrated music for the drama that it accompanies. The beauty of the music and scenery is a perfect contrast to the horrors and harsh realities of war. And it was designed to illustrate just that contrast. How can such a miraculous and beautiful creation be brought to the level of a killer or an animal willing to do anything just to survive? That's the fundamental question.

Though the film is not loaded with action, the action sequences are spectacular and capture the chaos, fear and uncertainty that many combat situations certainly must be.

For me this is almost a once in a lifetime film. The last film I saw that I felt this strongly about was the Shawshank Redemption. In short, this is quality work. Not action packed, or excessively graphic but thoroughly thought provoking and dramatic. Mr Malick is to be highly commended.

I'd definitely rate it as one of the 5 best films I have ever seen.


A deep philosophical study on war and it's impact on people   June 17, 2001
giovanni (Greece)
25 out of 27 found this review helpful

Not many war movies like The Thin Red Line have been released over the past decade . Saving Private Ryan shocked us all with it's brutal fight sequences yet it somehow hesitated to get involved too much with the soldier's soul and feelings . More recently , Pearl Harbor tried to give us a clearer view of what war is like but it was simply too polished and left you with the impression that the U.S army preferred to send first-class fashion models at it's front line. The Thin Red Line is a whole different story . It includes some stunning battles scenes too but mainly , it sticks to the thoughts that went through the minds of the people who where there. It trashes the act of war and judges it constantly by showing images of the piecefull nature and daily life of the native people of the islands right after the moments of chaos that took place during the battles . Although the cast includes some really popular stars like John Cusack , John Travolta and George Clooney ,the director chooses two less-known yet highly gifted and talented actors to carry the film : Jim Caviezel who , right from the start chooses to be alieneted in his own , dreamy world rejecting the people who conduct the war and their fake ideals and Ben Chaplin who searches for a goal in his life after breaking up with his wife. Movies like that can change a man's prespective about life and that is something that only few film makers have achieved yet.