The Thin Red Line (1999)

Crossing the Line

Malik's epic anti-war treatise is less effective on repeat and its pitch at the sublime is best savoured on big-screen theatre darkness to work its magic. Much of the necessary swatches of sky through tree canopy, macro nature, and shifting light over sussurating grasses, the ephphanies experienced from the Christ-like Caviezel used to counter the violence of combat terror, is lost on small format. Initially, the film moved me. Now, and with the pretentious,'New World', added to Malik's oeuvre, I side with those who experience tedium, while holding that it is an incomparably better film. The lack of character development is essential to the director's overview; their parts clearly serve the director's philosophy. Yet there are stunning cameo roles from Nolte, Penn, and Cavizel. It is one of the few war films that delve into the individual fear and deaths of the combatants. But there's too much repetition, even given that...flashbacks to the young bride, Penn's pessimistic utterances, the musings of the Jim Caviezel character which verge on a parody of Tarkovskian metaphysical doubt. He alone seems bent on a spiritual quest to redeem the self midst the atrocities, and a theosophic strain leaks through his pronouncements. His self-sacrifice is inevitable. A half-hour edit would profit the audience, and I would nominate this final section. But who could seriously quibble with an American director pitching at the transcendental, a glimpse of a better and redemptive world than the one thrust upon the terrorised youth depicted. Malick, bravely, went for the big picture in this one and must have felt to the far side of his culture in the act of doing so. November 16, 2008

So listlessly boring, I remember almost nothing

I saw this movie in theaters when it first came out. I was a child, then, 10 or 11 years old. Maybe I should have been set up to be bored, but even looking back on it now, ten years later, I find myself justified in claiming it boring.

Even as a child, I wasn't the sort easily bored by adult-type movies. I could sit through a movie like "Courage Under Fire" and be entertained. This one, however, had about two scenes of action, and the rest just people lounging around talking to themselves.

First they try a D-Day style mock-up beach landing, only there's no one firing at them from the beach, so that ends up looking awkward, whether or not it happened in real life. Then comes a charge up a hill, where there is ACTION~! Then the soldiers make it into a village, where the spend the remaining 1.5-2 hours living among the people, talking to themselves, thinking about stuff, and doing pretty much absolutely nothing, either physically or mentally, with no content left to excite World War II studiers either in the form of action, strategy, or insight.

What you get instead is these characters, most of which are given no time or chance to develop into more than caricatures of generic emotions or archetypes, rambling about their lives with random images and hammy philosophy.

At the end, the Japanese attack the village and all the soldiers run or die. And I'm left wondering exactly why the film even existed.

And then I remember this is the same director who made "The New World", another movie with half a page of plot, and thirty pages of people frolicking about to cinematography and pretentious attempts at being an "art film", so that anyone who comes out of the film not liking it can simply be scoffed at with the typical "You just don't get it. Typical stupid American needing your car chases and shoot-outs to be entertained" manifesto.

Well I'm not a stupid American who needs car chases and shoot-outs to be entertained. I shed real tears of emotion at Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood". I gape in amazement at the drama of such movies as "Twelve Angry Men" and "Midnight Cowboy", laugh at movies ranging from "The Big Lebowski" and "Annie Hall" to "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters", and even get thrills from action movies like "Casino Royale" or "Munich".

This film has no categorization; it is a run-on sentence of a movie. It is powerfully empty nothingness, just film on a reel and nothing of substance. October 27, 2008

"Thin Red Line" or "Thin Plot Line"

I am shocked by the number of glowing reviews this movie received - I saw it on opening day in a theater crowded with active duty military troops (I am a retired vet), and most got up and walked out by the half-way point! And I wish I had walked out too! Having 14 months+ in Iraq, I do not see that our troops would feel much differently about this movie today than they did back in 1999. My feelings are not based on the fact that the movie is "anti-war" - the more accurately a war movie portrays combat, the less likely it is you want to go out and advocate violence. The problem is that The Thin Red Line is very poorly executed depiction of infantry combat and does not provide either compelling characters or credible story that makes you care.

The Thin Red Line is set during one of the most pivotal battles in the Pacific, but there is non of the sense of desperation in the movie. Plot development? What plot? Character development? None of that either. Dialog? Acting? Wooden and melodramatic. The cinematography is gorgeous, but does not save the movie. How many flashbacks to a the same coconut on a beach can a man tolerate? All in all, I was absolutely bored.

If you are interested in a good war movie set in the WWII Pacific Theater of Operations I suggest The Great Raid based on actual events and adapted from William B. Breuer's book about the 1945 liberation of the Cabanatuan Prison Camp on the Philippine island of Luzon. But I suspect that many of those who have given The Thin Red Line a thumbs up would balk at the The Great Raid which in addition to being anti-war, also demonstrates why you sometimes have to fight with its opening a scene of the Japanese massacre of prisoners of war on Palawan. October 17, 2008

A Disappointing Film

I had high hopes for this film with its inherently courageous material based upon the Guadalcanal campaign. However, the movie itself has a relentless boredom, much more like a Benneton commercial than a feature film. Malick, despite his Days of Heaven classic, lost touch with audiences and maybe even filmmaking over his 20 year absence. The art of conveying ideas and powerful visual metaphors within a story worked with David Lean. With Malick's work here, it's a whimsical, uncertain philosophical reference without meaning.

Several actors like Jim Cavizel were good to watch but overall the movie meandered so much that, when it ended, I thought that they had left off a reel of film.
October 7, 2008

Boring, Boring, Boring

As a 24-year military veteran, this movie was a complete miss and bore for me. I couldn't wait for this slow paced movie to end! A weak storyline and none existent plot further plagued this attempt to personalize war. The overacting of Nolte and barely noticeable Penn do nothing to overcome the poor directing. I still can't grasp why some people give Penn so much credit for this and other performances. His acting skills are simplistic and unbelievable, unless the part includes a drunk or drug addict.

My advice is to skip this movie and choose one of several better alternatives. August 8, 2008

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