Rating: 
Summary: A Work of Art and a Masterpiece at That
Review: This is a very moving, beautifully filmed, wonderfully scored work of art. The casting was very interesting. Lots of well-known names and faces show up throughout. I watched this at home in installments so the 3 hour length didn't bother me at all. There are certainly some slow parts that those with short attention spans won't appreciate. The film is more about the psychological and physical damage caused by conflict and man's questioning of the meaning of life. The voice overs of the characters was an interesting technique that doesn't detract from the film by any means. It should be used in more films to add depth and provide more of a what a written novel provides; which is a deeper, more meaningful experience. This is not your typical war film and wasn't really meant to be. However, as a work of art that makes you think, it is a masterpiece.
Rating: 
Summary: DO ALL MARINES HAVE BLUE EYES?
Review: Overwrought dramatization of the Guadalcanal campaign. The marines all look like actors right out of acting school. There is a droning over voice saying anti war platitudes. Of course, all the women at home are beautiful with not a plump or pimply one among them.
Sean Penn is at his worst here.
However, there are some well done battle scenes.
Rating:
Summary: Curious
Review: For those that "don't get it" I suggest a good John Wayne film. Do not watch this film if you want a shoot'm up war flick. Also if you want to be entertained while you drink your six-pack, this isn't for you. This is a deep emotional roller coaster subjecting and analyzing characters through fear, love, honor and a host of other psychological emotions. If you possess the ability you can put yourself in their shoes and compare your own traumatic (or not so) lives to their plight. This is a movie for the thinker. Classic book readers should also enjoy the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Life is short...don't waste 3 hours watching this film
Review: This could be the most boring movie I have ever watched. I don't know how it got nominated for an academy award unless the academy members heard that in the theaters when the movie was over the audiences stood up and cheered. The thing is, they weren't cheering for the movie, they were cheering because it was over.This movie has a beginning and what might be called an end, but in between there is vast nothingness. There is no plot or storyline. It consists of battle scenes interspersed with the characters' philisophical rambling thoughts which mostly mean nothing because they make no sense. The acting in this film is horrendous. John Travolta is unconvincing and looks puffy with what appears to be a really bad pair of false teeth. Sean Penn plays himself in that he only shows two emotions throughout the picture, anger and disgust. Nick Nolte would play an excellent raving lunatic except I don't think his character is supposed to be a raving lunatic. John Savage does play a lunatic, but he comes off as the comic relief. The vast majority of the time that John Cusack is on the screen he is just staring at his superior officer.
George Clooney could have been good if he had been in the film for longer than 5 minutes. Woody Harrelson is trying so hard not to be "Woody from Cheers" that that is all you can think about. There is a stellar performance by Jack (no last name) as "old man walking through the field". Sorry, that's only understandable if you've already seen this exercise in boredom trying to pass itself off as a great piece of cinema. If you choose to watch this film, don't say I didn't warn you.
Rating:
Summary: A bad movie
Review: A boring movie that has overly impressed many with how "deep" it is. If the gore of Saving Private Ryan isn't your thing try All Quiet on the Western Front (the 1930 version)it manages to capture the horror of war without gore or artsy tripe.
Rating: 
Summary: An Artist's View of Warfare.
Review: Its a shame that many reviewers don't see the sublime social commentary or inate poetry of this film, but I do understand why many are turned off by it. This is an intellectual war film, and does not have the same feel of a "Saving Private Ryan" or a "Black Hawk Down" (which are both great films, and in my opinion slightly better than this one). That being said, this film is very well done...but if you don't appreciate the art of it you will find it lacking. Especially if you expected a "Private Ryan" experiance set in the Pacific Theater of WW2. I give it 4 stars, simply because I don't consider it a "masterpiece" as some have stated. Some of the narration is contrived and cliche, something you'd expect to hear in a sophomore level creative writing course. Maybe this was intentional, as the ages of the soldiers would be around that age. I personally tend to think the writer simply ran out of inspiration. Even so, this film is better than most. Worth a purchase? I'd rent it first...
Rating:
Summary: mistaken comparisons
Review: I'm not going to give the basic drivel about "this is a great movie, don't miss it!" and all that, because there are plenty of those reviews already. I just want to make a basic point: people love to compare this movie to Saving Private Ryan, since both are war movies, and both came out in the same year. This is a very mis-leading comparison though. Comparing The Thin Red Line to Saving Private Ryan is like comparing Cast Away to Robinson Crusoe: it's apples and oranges. The Thin Red Line is a movie about life and its meaning which is set in a war (a situation very conducive to this kind of reflection), while Saving Private Ryan is a straight movie about war; Cast Away is a movie about remaining static while the rest of the world changes (again, being stranded on an island is a situation that is conducive to this kind of story), while Robinson Crusoe is a straight movie about survival. In short, my point is that we must judge this movie for itself, not in relation to Saving Private Ryan. Both are great movies, but also very different movies with very different objectives.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible...
Review: I'm a fan of good WWII movies and this is the worst one I've seen yet. It's like what you'd get if you had someone who's anti-war and who's directed Calvin Klein ads for 20 years make a war movie. For the first twenty minutes I thought it was a movie about Vietnam! It doesn't look like WWII at all. The voiceovers were meant to sound deep but came across as funny instead. Terrence's obsessions with nature and symbolism are quite evident. At nearly three hours, it's two hours too long if you ask me. If I could give it 0 stars I would.
Rating:
Summary: I just don't get it...
Review: I keep reading these 5-star reviews about how this is the greatest war movie, beautiful this, genius that, etc etc...I like long movies, I can sit through a 3 hour long movie with no problem at all, just as long as its interesting. This movie was an hour too long. The first 20-30 minutes are absolutely boring (in my opinion), and the definitely killed it. The dream sequences with the guys wife are incredibly boring, and for me, ruined the movie. I know its supposed to tap into the psyche of what the typical soldier might have been going through, blah blah blah...It ruined it for me. What I didn't understand was all the big name stars in this: John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney, the AWESOME John C. Reilly, even John Cusack. All of these people had tiny parts. Now granted, I don't dig Travolta or Clooney at all, but John C. Reilly and Cusack are great. A complete waste of talent (and I imagine money) in my opinion. Nick Nolte was brilliant though. I'm only giving this two stars because the actual war scenes were rather impressive, but altogether nothing special at all. Like some other reviewers, I thought the portrayal of the Japanese soldiers was a big joke. Why are they acting like insane little kids? Where are they're clothes? Makes no sense. And like others have said, the history is all wrong. For God's sake, if your going to bother, do it right. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed with this movie at all, three hours of my life that I'll never get back.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible flick!
Review: This movie has got to be one of the worst war movies ever made. First, the "dream sequences" are just stupid, they screw up the flow of the movie and the insertion of memories from home seems haphazard most times. Second, the combat, while it probably does show the horrible conditions the men fought in is backwards as one previous reviewer pointed out. Second, the director obviously again knows nothing about how the Japanese fought. There weren't very many Japanese soldiers who surrendered at all. This movie portrays them as giving up in a lot more numbers than actually occured.
Last, this movie is about 10-20 minutes too long. The flick could, and should have, ended after the combat secured the island. Instead this director decided to take 20 minutes or so to include a couple more pointless "dream sequences" about home plus a scene where one character's wife sends him a letter asking for a divorce. While this did happen to many soldiers in both the PTO and ETO, the movie doesn't really spend enough time prior to the combat scenes developing the characters enough to make the audience care. Nick Nolte also does a horrible job of portraying an American officer. The director, like many in Hollywood in my opinion set out to do an anti-war flick regardless of what he had to twist about how real officers treated their men in WW II.
In short, this is just a horrible movie and the world is still awaiting a good flick about the pacific war along the lines of Saving Private Ryan.
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