Rating: 
Summary: Sheer visual poetry
Review: I watched this DVD the same weekend as I watched Saving Private Ryan. I could not believe how different they were in portraying what I thought may have been similar themes.This movie was almost spiritual in the intensity of the visual imagary and then coming down with a bang whenever the fighting started. Strange, but unlike Saving Private Ryan which left me with some indelible scenes, this movie has left me with a feeling and pictures of the sky! A recommendation, however. Do not watch this and Saving Private Ryan close together unless you want to get even more depressed next time you watch the news.
Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE
Review: This film is one the best of the decade - rich, thought-provoking, beautiful, daring. The best and most bold aspect of this film though is in the narrative. This kind of movie RARELY gets made these days - by Hollywood or by independent filmmakers. Atom Egoyan could have directed this movie, but that's about it - Spielberg? Spielberg couldn't touch this movie. It is a far more sophisticated film than the ultra-commercial Saving Private Ryan. SVP is a great entertaining film to watch once and then forget - its sentimentality and simplistic characterizations are enjoyable the first time they're shoved down your throat. But a second viewing reveal the film 's hollow center. Thin Red Line on the other hand is quietly disturbing. The flashbacks to the soldier's wife scenes alone are more powerful than just about anything to come out of Hollywood in the last ten years. If only more films were made like this....
Rating: 
Summary: Snorefest
Review: I loaded this into my DVD expecting a fine film based on my all-time favourite book and I was disappointed... 10 minutes into the movie. A quarter of the way through I fell asleep and woke up. Thinking I had missed something good, I went back and watched what I missed. Boring. I fell asleep again. About 2 hours into the movie I got so sick of this that I just stopped watching it. It was sooooooooo boring. Sure, it's an OK movie - if you haven't read the book. It's unrelated to it in almost every aspect. This was just garbage. Saving Private Ryan is 100000 times better than this. Then, ANY war movie is 100000 times better than this. See the original The Thin Red Line in black and white. It is so much better. A fine film full of potential - ruined. Sigh...
Rating:
Summary: Best war film of all time.
Review: Don't allow the length of this movie to prevent you from experiencing the most gripping and emotional war film ever. Terrence Malick has not hidden behind a contrived plot, but rather tackled the real issues associated with war - what makes us kill each other, how can we be capable of such horror and what pushes us over the thin red line? Discover the true power of cinema.
Rating: 
Summary: I have a 350 IQ
Review: Yes, I'm smarter than Marylin Vos Savant. Yet I was STILL bored by this movie. A reviewer below from Canada droned on about how he understands why people wouldn't like this movie, it's only for intellectuals who can truly appreciate poetry and beauty. Please. Yeah I know war contrasted with the beauty of nature blah blah. I admit, some of the cinematography was stunning, and the acting was exceptional. But I felt as if all this beauty and poetry was shoved down my throat, especially by the pointless narration. Maybe Malik's view of modern day movie goers is low with all the dumbed down action flicks they seem to enjoy and he felt he had to spell out the premise for people to "get it". If so, his movie suffered because of it. It was boring, to me anyway. So, I wouldn't insult anyones intelligence who liked this movie, nor would I for people who hated it. I "got it".
Rating:
Summary: Comparing to Saving Private Ryan is an exercise in futility
Review: Saving Private Ryan is an excellent film. So is The Thin Red Line. They are very very different. Viewing either film with an eye to the other is a disservice to both films, as well as to yourself. The Thin Red Line is about beauty as much as it is about war, and the stark dichotomy is moving. I wept, but I wept for all of humankind, rather than merely for the individual characters, and I was left with a remarkable sense of peace. I don't think it's a film for everyone, but if it works for you, it's time well spent.
Rating:
Summary: A fine film...ruined
Review: This is a potentially fine film completely ruined by force-fed intellectualism and miles of excessive footage best left on the cutting room floor. The closing shot is such a simple yet elegantly powerful image, that it should have left audiences in awed silence. Instead, it left them grumbling and wanting their money back. The message had already been bludgeoned to death over and over during the ponderous course of this movie. War is a crime against nature...we get it already! Other flaws include the completely ridiculous and totally unnecessary philosophical narration, the loose ends in the story that are never resolved, and the raised expectations that are never satisfied. Mallick expertly sets us up for what promises to be great movie moments and then he doesn't deliver. To be fair, this tactic works in some instances. For example, the suspense leading up to the beach landing scene makes the viewer expect to soon see bullets, bombs and body parts flying (a la Pvt. Ryan). Instead, the troops are greeted with a malignant silence and the dread feeling of being sucked into a trap. To me, this was just as unnerving as a horrific battle scene and, respectfully, I had to concede that the filmmaker had me right where he wanted me. However, as the film trudges on, we are confronted with more of these build-ups, with no pay-off, and start to feel as if we're being had. I couldn't help but think that Mallick took some perverse pleasure in doing this. Perhaps it was the artsy thing to do. Anyway, a lot of people did like this movie so please go and judge for yourself. If you do decide to watch it, I'd like to offer a few viewing tips to make your experience more rewarding: 1. Do NOT fast forward any scene containing Nick Nolte. He is amazing. 2. DO fast forward any scene containing jungle bats, lizards and other tropical creatures. Nothing happens to them. 3. Prepare to hit the MUTE button anytime you hear narration. Un-MUTE periodically to see if it is safe to listen again. 4. Do NOT convince anyone to watch this with you because George Clooney is in it. This is a BIG mistake.
Rating:
Summary: HATED IT....
Review: The Cast gives me every reason to like this movie.... But the people they play do not... there isn't really anyone to like in this movie - nobody to cheer for. And the long drawn out dream scenes get to be very boring... Don't waster your time buying it... If you must see it - rent it first... It will save you money in the long run....
Rating:
Summary: Shallow, Trite and Pretentious
Review: This is a film that fails on almost every level. As an adaptation of a novel it misses all the major themes expressed by James Jones, relocating the "action" to an historical battlefield (Guadalcanal) where Jones had left it specifically ambiguous. As a war film, there is little of the feel of war; the combat scenes are orthodox, there is little shock (to either viewer or the combatants) and the combat seems to take place in a pristinely maintained nature reserve - Guadalcanal was a mosquito infested swamp with the highest rate of malarial infection of any place in the Pacific theatre. As an exercise in myth-making, it fails to provide a central character whose journey can enlighten us - we are instead subjected to a constant barrage of disingenuous voice overs, mock clever images and mundane editing. As a philosophical journey, it expresses nothing beyond teenage existentialism which it seeks to bolster with bombastic use of cinematography. Someone (more witty than I) once said "Mallick never saw a tree he didn't love". This is no more aptly displayed than in his clumsy attempts at juxtaposition between the beauty of north Queensland (whoops that's meant to be Guadalcanal isn't it) and the ferocity of the war it inadequately attempts to portray. Or is it a device to frame the natural element of war within the natural environment? Or is it to contrast the timelessness of nature with the ephemera of mankind? Who knows? And frankly, who cares? Within the film we are supposedly transported into the heads of the GIs on the ground. Apparently they are 1st year philosophy students who spend the whole time soliloquising(?) in a fashion that would have Baudrillard and Lyotard polevaulting all around the cinema. The fact that most GIs were average guys from farms and factories and from an era that predates the whole postmodernist movement is blithely ignored. Instead we are subjected to an interminable drone of voice-over, with little or no differentiation between the characters to help you build any framework in which to place them. The voice-overs merely become an irritating part of the soundtrack. Can you quote one significant line from the film that encapsulates its themes and relate the context in which it was delivered? I didn't think so. The supposed main character Whit wanders the battlefield in a state of almost perpetual ecstacy, searching for that Zen moment whereby he resolve his life in a perfect death. Are we supposed to care about people like this? The idea that we should welcome war and violent death as a mechanism to achieve some form transcendance I find ludicrous at best and morally bankrupt in the extreme. This sort of thinking led to the corruption of Bushido into a death cult that found its final form in the Rape of Nanking, the Burma-Thailand railway and the mass suicides on Okinawa. Nick Nolte is, as usual, superb, as are many of the other performances. But good performances on their own do not a great movie make. Great movies also require, at least, a plot of consequence, depth of character, reasonable pacing, more than functional editing, interesting dialogue and some form of motivation to explain something (anything). In all this The Thin Red Line fails. This movie ambitiously attempts mythmaking for the 20th century, but succeeds only in presenting a formless mishmash of images and meaningless platitudes contained within a poorly edited and badly scripted shell of cinematographic masturbation. In trying so hard to be "significant" and "deep" this film is merely irrelevant and shallow.
Rating:
Summary: Perfection at a Price...
Review: Many people say that they hated "The Thin Red Line". Most of these people had already seen "Saving Private Ryan", and were probably expecting another blood-bath, sratchy-filmed WWII movie. This is not what anybody expected. "The Thin Red Line" starts out as a seemingly boring movie. The beginning is beautiful, very pretty scenery... much different then "Saving Private Ryan". Slowly, but surely (and definitely artistically), the movie creeps towards the battles of Guadacanal. The majority of the movie is based in the hills of Guadacanal... and the cinematography is some of the best, in any movie ever... period. There are shots that are 1/2 a mile wide, and there are soldiers in the whole shot. What little action there is is great. Almost "Braveheart-like" at times, it really gets the adrenaline (and suspense) flowing. The movie really shines in the acting and the general intelligence of the story. The movie seems to be fragmented between many different characters, but by the end, the stories are completed and you are left with a different emotion for each different part. Nick Nolte and Sean Penn are absolutely amazing in this film, and Woody Harrelson really shows his stuff during a certain death scene. "The Thin Red" line seems long, and it is... 2 hours and 45 minutes. But the second time through, it goes much faster, and you can piece together the things you missed (and you will) from the first viewing. This is by far the smartest war movie ever filmed, but it's not for everyone. I give it 5 out of 5 stars because this movie toys with your mind in such a way that it will leave you thinking about it for days.
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