The Thin Red Line

Rating:
Summary: A pretentious Hollywood "art" movie
Review: I get the feeling this movie was made for Hollywood itself, and the actors and staff; to make themselves "believe" they are artists -- instead of the over-priced court jesters they are. This movie really sucks. It WILL bring tears to your eyes -- tears of boredom. It is much too long, overdrawn, and pompous. It runs almost 3 hours -- about 1 and 1/2 hours too long. If I had to sit through one more of the misty, dreamy flashbacks of the wife, I too would have volunteered for a suicide mission. Fortunately, her Dear John letter saved me. If you're looking for a poetic, moving accountant of men and women in war, then please see DEAR AMERICA - LETTERS HOME FROM VIETNAM; a much more powerful drama. (Next on the list would be PLATOON, by Oliver Stone, for stark realism). But this movie, is NOT it. Don't be fooled by the hype, and the wannabe eggheads. Hollywood just doesn't know how to make an art movie about war. For that, they need to stick to big-budget comic book flicks like APOCALYSPE NOW and FULL METAL JACKET.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Underated, Wonderful WW2 Film!!!
Review: I rented this movie not expecting to like it very much. I had already seen "Saving Private Ryan" in the theatre, and had heard that Thin Red Line wasn't NEARLY as good. Well, I have to say that the critics were wrong! Both are wonderful films, but I really don't see how you can compare them, even though they're both about the same war. I was especially impressed by the performance of relative newcomer Jim Caviezel, who gives a haunting portrayal of Witt. Just another example of a time when you shouldn't listen to the critics. I give this movie an A+ (and yes, this is another tearjerker!)

Rating:
Summary: national geographic meets new age gospel
Review: I like movies that make you think.I like to be intellectually stimulated. But this movie throws philosophical babble at the viewer a mile a minute.Whats worse,the phlosophical reveries make no sense. Basically,rent the quinessential war movie SAVING PRIVATE RYAN instead.

Rating:
Summary: Poetic, lyrical, surreal, sublime, haunting¿beautiful
Review: The Thin Red Line is the single most beautiful movie I have ever seen. What exactly makes it so beautiful I can't quite put into words. I could say that its is the immense and stunning beauty of the animals, greenery, water, and sky as captured by Malick's camera (such as the recurring image of pure, beautiful, white sunlight, streaming, filtered, through grass, leaves, the tops of trees). I could say that it is the deeply poetic voiceovers, whether philosophical (Witt) or personal (Bell), the brief glimpses we are afforded into the characters' souls (Witt questioning the horror he sees around him: "This great evil...where'd it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root, did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, marking us with the sight of what we might have known? Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you too? Have you passed through this night?"...Bell remembering the wife he left behind: "We...we together...one being...flow together like water...till I couldn't tell you from me...I drink you now...now. You're my light...my guide.") I could say that it is the brilliant and heartbreaking juxtaposition of radiance and violence throughout the film (a young soldier, little more than a boy, who, as he lies dying, looks up, away from the carnage that surrounds him and that has embraced him, up to the sky, to the pure and radiant light)....I could group all this together and say that it is the sheer mastery of Malick's craft, the artfulness with which he has put this film together...I could say all of this and so much more, and yet not come within a light-year of expressing the awesome, wondrous, aching beauty of this film.

To those of you who loved and admired the film as much as I did-thank you for your positive comments. I agree wholeheartedly. We are fellow worshippers at the altar of beauty and art.

To those of you who felt this movie paled in comparison to Saving Private Ryan-here are my thoughts on SPR. I found it technically brilliant, and thought it visually and psychologically stunning in its depiction of the violent horror of war. The 30-minute opening centerpiece chilled my blood and flooded my tear ducts. I left the theater in a blind daze after the end credits and was literally unable to think or speak coherently for the remainder of the evening. Running through my head, not in so many words, but in residual impressions and random images and lines from the movie, was this line of thought: "How? How did these men do it? How could they witness that horror and still bring themselves to charge into it and become part of it, one with it? How did they put all their natural human impulses on hold, surrender their reason, their very humanity, and bring themselves to add to the bloodshed? Whence came their courage, their strength?...I could never do it. I could never, in a million years, find courage like that, strength like that...and nor should I ever need to. Nor should anyone ever need to, or ever have needed to. War is a sick and bloody business, the worst of many evils man has injected into this world..." So ran my thoughts as I left the theater, eyes swollen and emotions shredded. But after the initial shock had worn off and I began to think about the movie in a more calm and rational way, I realized, uncomfortably, that it had its flaws. Rather glaring ones at that. Matt Damon's little monologue about the girl in the barn, for one, I found tasteless and completely inappropriate in the context of the movie. Then there was the graceless and unnecessary prologue and epilogue, with the old Damon in the graveyard. And even the very fact that Tom Hanks' character dies bothered me. His death seemed to me shamelessly manipulative, a device deliberately planted to draw even more tears and wounded emotions from the already wracked audience.

In short, I found Saving Private Ryan powerful and stunning, but undeniably flawed. In The Thin Red Line, however, I quite literally can find no flaws. (This, of course, may simply be due to obtuseness on my part, but it might also be due to the care, attention, and craft with which this movie was made. Each of the various criticisms, both serious and inane, that I have heard or read of this movie-that it's too long, too incoherent, that there's no plot, that it's poorly edited, that it doesn't develop its characters, that well-known faces aren't given the attention one would expect, that it's in fact _not_ well crafted, that it's pretentious, pointless...-I considered carefully and yet could find no ground for, or could find a valid retort to. The Thin Red Line is, to me, as beautiful and perfect a film as I have ever seen.) To further compare these two films, on the emotional level, TTRL didn't affect me as deeply or directly as SPR. Rather than taking my capacity to feel pain at another human being's sufferings to its extreme, as SPR did in its straightforward, punching manner, TTRL made me feel a raw ache deep in my bones, caused by its portrayal of and its characters' sparely articulated thoughts about the horror of war, this horror that has woven its bloodstained way into our existence. And yet, at the same time, the movie showed me how beautiful is this existence despite the horror-or perhaps in part because of this horror. It made me see that it is indeed possible, as Witt says, to look upon a dying bird and see glory. It made me see that horror is integral to our existence, and that it in its own strange and violent way adds to the total sum of beauty in our lives, in our contemplations, musings, feelings. All in all, TTRL made me think and feel more, and more deeply, in the long run, than did SPR. Saving Private Ryan left me with deep pain, but, crudely speaking, only pain. The Thin Red Line left me with reinforced wonder at existence, and a deeper sensitivity to the beauty underlying all things.

To those of you who completely missed the beauty and artistry of this film, who call it boring, pointless, not worth the money you spent on it, who say you fast-forwarded through it or fell asleep during it-my only guess is that the elements required to appreciate, however dimly, a film of this type and caliber are simply missing in your constitutions. It's okay; I don't blame you. It takes all kinds of people to make up this world.

And finally, to Terence Malick-thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the most beautiful cinematic experience of my life.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!A powerfull and poetic masterpiece!
Review: Don't miss it and view it again. It's not a war film but a poetic reflection of a bad known period of the World War II. No cliche here, just fantastic actings and a poetic reflection on yourself.Have been waiting such a film for a while.

Rating:
Summary: Three geatest war movies:Thin Red Line, Platoon, and SPR
Review: The movie is superb! The action is great, acting is great (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte,Jim Caviezel), directer is close to genius, filming is great, plot is great, cinemitography is beyond great, etc. There are 3 great war movies that I love and give equally 5 stars to:Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, and Platoon, but all of them are different and unique in showing what war really does to a man...

Rating:
Summary: It is one of the greatest war movies of our time!!!!!!
Review: This movie makes you think hard (maybe thats why) about lifeand how war can mess it up or simply end it. Sean Penn, Nick Nolte,and Jim Caviezel acted superbly. The movie is a little slow, but the action and acting make up for it.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: I notice that all those who did not like this movie think it is a war movie. It is not. It is a movie about spirituality, about how humans behave in unknown and frightening circumstances. Above all, it is about the duality of man: one role as a member of the natural world around him and the other as the destroyer of nature. Beautifully filmed, it is a mesmerizing tale that absorbs the open-minded viewer into a "high" quite similar to Apocalypse Now. If you want artillery and grenades, rent 'The Longest Day'.

Rating:
Summary: I've seen better jello commercials!
Review: How in the name of anything intelligent could any viewer withhalf of a brain cell say this was a great movie? All it was meant todo was ride on the tail of Saving Private Ryan. Look at the way it was advertised- big name actors who made cameo appearances, designed to attract us to the theatre. Staggered release dates, extra long viewing time to get the concession stuff sold ( the best thing one could of done at this movie is get an extra big buttered popcorn). It flopped. Awful movie.

Rating:
Summary: BAD!
Review: Another anti-war movie. Come on people, how many grunts are actually thinking that stuff in their heads at that time. Woody would of died because of that grenade. The fight is real bad. I could of made a better movie with $1.95.