The Thin Red Line

Rating:
Summary: If war is like this, put me on the front line.
Review: There's an excellent reason Mr. Malick doesn't make many movies and this boredom factory of unrealistic war talk, piercing and irritating music, long dragging close ups and singing pygmys is that reason. The people of this planet should unite to get a restraining order barring Malick from being within a five thousand foot radius of any kind of camera. Steven Spielberg had entire audiences shocked and educated on the horrors of war and Malick turned the whole war experience into a poetry reading. Don't get me wrong, but I'm sure just before Tom Hanks took the beach in Saving Private Ryan, he could have taken time out to think about his wife sitting on the swings or maybe even sing with the local natives to pass the time until the next bullet wizzes by. And I love the realism created when an entire army with machine guns can't take a well secured enemy shelter, yet one guy with a six shooter takes them out without any resistance. Mr. Malick, for the love of film goers everywhere, take a lesson from Spielberg, Coppola and Stone and realise that dirty men and a fleeting shot of an amutated limb a war film does not make. What you have conveyed in two hours of 'poetic' dribble, Tom Hanks can communicate the exact same message with just his face in a second. Thin Red Line is easily the most painful movie experince that I have ever had to endure. War is not hell, this movie is.

Rating:
Summary: Moving, boring, adult and antiwar
Review: Malick's problem is that a war film will be pro-war unless it makes an effort in the other direction, in which case it will be...anti-war.

His humility is that the phenomenological experience of war is so different from that of ordinary existence in modern society (apart, of course, from downtown Manhattan on Sep 11) that it makes no sense to be anti-war, either.

If Hobbes was right, war time is a different system wherein different rules apply. Hobbes' theory was that the moral rules we devise in civil society have meaning only under a sovereign, and in the thin red line, which is to say the border line, between one sovereign power and other (for example, on a small ridge, on the one side of which the sovereign is the Emperor of Japan, and on the other side, the people of the United States) these rules do not apply.

In childish "war" films, which reproduce war and a thirst for desparate glory that was cursed by a poet in WWI, nobody goes mad. Ever notice that? Nobody in Saving Private Ryan goes mad.

In The Thin Red Line, several men go mad and this is the truth of The Thin Red Line, and the lie of Saving Private Ryan.

I say this because my uncle served as artillery commander in WWII and several men in his command went mad. Indeed, shell shock, combat fatigue, and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress are the modal injuries, the defining injuries, of modern war.

If we can believe John Keegan, nobody went mad at Waterloo. When one of Wellington's commander's legs was removed by a cannon ball, he said to Wellington, by God, I've lost my leg. The Duke looked at him and said, by God, so you have.

Perhaps one could maintain a stiff upper lip, and the illusion that the last moments at la Belle Alliance were some sort of tea-time, if the high technology was Brown Bess and canister. The media at one and the same time tell us about a progress that is also a stasis, end-historical in that war, despite technological "improvements" (that somehow never include the simple ability to clean land-mines) will always be with us, and real men do not go mad.

But as Malick makes quite clear, real men, including Sarge (the sergeant who takes twelve men up the Japanese-held ridge and loses every one) go mad. This has also been made clear by Paul Fussell's book The Great War and Modern Memory.

It is thought that shell shock, combat fatigue, and post-traumatic stress are basically a comment on the defects of character of the shocked, the fatigued, the stressed-out. But given that the condition was unheard of in the Franco-Prussian nonsense or in Cuba in '98, then they become instead a comment on war as a solution today.

This film is indeed boring. You pay to learn about war, then learn boredom, learn hurry up and wait, and learn (as we learn in the scenes in the troopship) how men become philosophers all at the horizon of death.

This film is much hated. It was released at the same time as Saving Private Ryan and it is entire a rebuke not only to Saving Private Ryan but all those comfortable men who in Hollywood offices would tempt children to dreams of desparate glory, where dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

But in the scene that begins in the mists of the forest below the ridge line and grows towards the taking of the Japanese camp, this film honors men in a way Steven Spielberg cannot honor them.

It's all very well, isn't it, for clowns like Samuel P. Huntington to talk about the clash of civilizations, as it was for Hobbes to slyly justify Parliamentary sovereignity as etched on bodies in Belfast today. But as Terence Malick has shown us Samuel P. Huntington will never have the dignity of one lousy slob who this academic's loose talk (his "clash of civilizations") leads to some decline, some fold of land, in Afghanistan.

It is necessary to be precise. Clowns like Spielberg reproduce the "glory" of war by draining men of dignity; nobody in Saving Private Ryan has any dignity, and it is necessary, in Spielberg's irretrievably adolescent economy, for a clerk, pressed into Hanks' platoon, to play the fool and coward...so we can transfer our own damn foolishness and utter moral and physical cowardice onto Someone Else.

Whereas nobody in The Thin Red Line is made to be a fool and coward. The commander, although relieved of his position, has a genuine argument for a recon in force, and Nolte's careerism is also his genuine committment to duty. This is moving, boring, adult, and anti-war...in the sense that no such men should ever be wasted again.

Rating:
Summary: A HOLLYWOOD achievement, not a filmmaking achievement.
Review: This World War II drama suspends its plot on the emotional power of brutality and torture of combat. An American army fighting for survival must take over a force of Japanese soldiers. (In other words, there is barely a plot.)

First off, the film has a point. It wants to look good. It combines actors including: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Travolta, George Clooney, Jim Caviezel, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, and Elias Koteas. What would the problem be with such a star studded cast? The problem is that if focuses on none of them. The film skips from character to character and the audience learns nothing about them. The fact that George Clooney is even credited at all is absurd. He holds a thirty-five second scene in the very end of the film. He gives a tid-tad speech to his band of soldiers and that's the end of him.

Earlier in the film, Nick Nolte and John Cusack form a conversation after the Americans take over a Japanese hill. Finally, you think you are going to learn something about a character. Then "zzzzzzz". Nick Nolte (Lt. Col. Tall) talks about how he's going to make Cusack (Capt. Guff) the star of the war and he is going to give him everything he deserves- then that's the end of Cusack. He exits the movie unknowingly. The same goes for Nick Nolte. Towards the first fifteen minutes, he spits off a few lines that literally mean nothing to the audience. He's the sort-of tough cookie of the film. He orders his men "this and that" and never stops to rest or wait. He's the one who seems as though he constantly saying CHARGE! And he won't take slackers, nor prisoners. Then, when we really want to see him in the ending battle- he is just gone. Where'd he go? It is as though he's just written off the film from there on.

Sean Penn is basically a nonentity in the film. There is nothing to be remembered from his character. He like a solid rock that is just lying at the bottom of the sea. Why is his name credited before the title? He is of no importance to the movie at all. I cannot remember one line that he said throughout the film because his character was so meaningless.

The agreeable performances only include Elias Koteas and Jim Caviezel who actually make something of nothing for this movie. There is actually character with these two. But the terrible thing is- the two heroes of the film... well--- Koteas is discriminated from his army, and Caviezel is killed. Once Director TERRENCE MALICK actually builds something in this film- he throws it out.

Woody Harrelson is barely recognizable. He unclips his own grenade and blows his own body apart, leading up to his memorable line- "I blew my own butt off." Besides the fact that the film has little potential or means to be anything more than an overcasted, mistreated war "drama", it is drawn out to the point of tears.

The film isn't really gory for the battle scenes- you just see bombs and hear little gunshots where, then, people fall to the ground. All these dreams of Caviezel and his wife are so pointless too. She just divorces him and he dies- what does that say? There is no hope or joy in this film. Just because it takes place in war doesn't mean it has to be completely depressing. It's like watching a stormy day when you have no electricity. You sit there in boredom and sadness, waiting for it to pass. That's exactly the way you feel when watching this. The Melanesian people really don't present a purpose either. They're just trying to point something out for Caviezel's past. They want to give him some sort of backround. But why is it the opening sequence? Nothing comes from them being in the film.

Underneath this pig slop, you see something of a film trying to come out. Koteas and Caviezel really try to help that. There is some dramatic war and brief emotion to be rewarded for this film- but 7 1998 Academy Award Award nominations (including Best Picture)... out of the question! SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is obviously much better. If this film had a point- something to look forward to, and not a 10-second clip of big actors who are slapped on the credits to try and promote the film, maybe it would be worth a little something. If you want a depressing time or even some war/drama nonsense... let this one go for the throat. Don't be surprised if you reach the FINAL ending at three hours and say that you wasted your time (or even fall asleep). I only paid a dollar to rent this film at the Anoka County Library, and I still think I deserve my money back. Expect very little from this WAY over hyped film. Because, if you edited this film, and took out all the walking, spitted talk, dreaming, and boredom of the entire thing- and just added together the actual performances and few war scenes- you'd only have a 45 minute to an hour long film. What a waste huh?

To conclude my review- this film could've been brilliant. It had a brilliant idea. It could've been everything. Yet, it's drawn down by big-name actors trying to promote the film when they either carry nothing for the film at all, or are just there for a minute- tops. The boredom and sappy sadness constantly increases which sadly gives the viewer nothing. I believe that if a plot cannot be worked or even be given a point by its own filmmakers- why should the audience bother to care at all? There is no joy to the film, it's just depressing, and it just rows along down that rushing river, reaching its three hours where an audience member says- "OK good its over. Oh hey was that just George Clooney right there?" Then the person sitting next to that person finally wakes up and says, "Huh... what'd you say?"

THE THIN RED LINE is "A Thin Red Line of film".

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully depicts mans fallen nature. ....
Review: Fantastic cinematography, music score, and narrative dialogue.
One of my TOP FIVE favorite films. Pure poetry. I even bought a second copy just in case something happens to my first! But in light of all that the first time I saw this movie I was half bored. The second time time just blew me away.

Rating:
Summary: Malick's War Film is Much Ado About Nothing
Review: Every now and then, a director you have never heard of makes his "long awaited return." The leading elitist entertainment magazines generate thier hype, selling the idea that this director's return will be something of a treat. You are supposed to take them at thier word when the say the person is a great director, without knowning what this greatness is based upon.

Such is the case with Terrence Malick. Chances are most of us have never heard of him, yet we are told to be excited that he is finally making another film. Then, when the film is released, we read about how "great" it is, and we want to go see it. So we go see it, and then those of us with a reasonable level of intellingence wonder what it was that we missed.

In the case of The Thin Red Line, the answer to that is simple: NOTHING. We are let into the minds of World War II Soldiers as they reflect on the nature of war, and the nature of an amorphous, pantheistic God. Its just not believable that soldiers had the time or the mental energy to sit and ponder in the midst of such a brutal war. The film also bombards us with nature imagery that is pretty but cryptic in meaning. We are also reminded of the Japanese Army's vulnerability at times, but see strangly little about thier intense cruelty.

A bizarre film this is; but not great. A bizarre film and a great film are not the same thing. Critics should learn the difference.

Rating:
Summary: Shockingly Bad War Film is Melatonin for the Imagination
Review: I survived The Thin Red Line. It is long, boring, and vicious in its criticism of the men and women who are part of war. Terence Malick does offer a scholar's perspective on war, and bores the
audience and then mocks their lack of interest.

The low point of the film is Nick Nolte's "Ulysses" complex commander who is bent on having the men charge to find his place in Western History - not for the men's lives themselves. I have met academics who have reiterated such thoughts, but most military history, both literature and anecdotal, that I have read is to the contrary.

The best part of this film is Hans Zimmer's score and John Toll's cinematography. It is too bad they work to gloss a weak script and a terrible comment on humanity.

Rating:
Summary: Best War Movie Ever
Review: I feel bad for this movie. It came out during Saving Private Ryan and a lot of people missed it. While Saving Private Ryan was high octane; i enjoyed the careful and critical analysis of war itself and the effects it has on soldiers. My uncle, who is a gulf war vet, hated this film and preferred Saving Private Ryan. I understand his stance but feel sorry that the army has warped his mind to be so patriotic that he sees war from only one perspective. James Caviezel is great in this movie. While it took me a while to understand who was talking during which scenes, the cast is excellent. I truly recommend this movie for anyone and hope they watch it with an open mind.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful film
Review: This is war, not seen through the eyes of some macho Rambo-type goon, nor even through the eyes of simple, naive, young men. This is war through the eyes of a contemplative, someone who is just a bit more sensitive and introspective than most. It is beautifully filmed, and the contrast between the beauty of the environment and the extreme violence of the war is harrowing. There is a definitive scene about half-way through where a young soldier, pinned down by gun fire, touches a small plant in front of him....the leaves of the plant close in reaction...but this is heartbreaking...innocence and beauty and subtlety juxtaposed against violence, hatred, and high caliber machine-guns. This is both a great war and anti-war movie.

Rating:
Summary: a thin red line between real and surreal ...
Review: this film has been compared countless times to saving private ryan - as is expected because they're both war movies. but they both have such a different presentation that really when you think about it, they are two different films entirely.
there are alot of actors (perhaps too many) in this film that only have a couple lines (such as john travolta, george cloony, and woody harrelson).
this film has received innumerable critisms about how it drags on and on and how it's not historically accurate one way or another. but lets see what we're talking about, we're talking about a film, not a documentary - films are works of art (whether good or bad is dependant on the viewer), films are meant to convey an emotional feeling (Whether sad, happy, angry, etc., etc.). films are not meant to be historically accurate (thats why we have so many films based on fiction - take any stephen king movie,sam raimi, john carpenter, james cameron, or stephen spielberg - they are not historically accurate [if they even relate to history at all] and they are not meant to be).
The Thin Red Line departs from conventional war movies and takes its own path, an emotional path that few films have trod.
some have criticized it for being too depressing, too gloomy and it is depressing and gloomy, but isn't that what war was? i know im contradicting myself by talking about history again, but again films are meant to make us feel something when we leave the theatre, not just walk out and feel nothing - badly made movies do that. if a film doesnt make a cry, then it should make us laugh or gasp or cringe, etc., etc.
The Thin Red Line is an emotional film that is long, yes, but aren't most if not all war movies? 3 hours is not long for a war movie (for example, saving private ryan, enemy at the gates, apocalypse now...).
The cinematography has been the only thing consistantly praised and that is so deserving. the excellent cinematography makes the script seem surreal, like we're traveling in a dream and who's to say that that's not the director's intent...

Rating:
Summary: Defined the experience of war and put me into the action
Review: I really shouldn't have liked this film as much as I did. After all, it had no plot to speak of, was much too long at three hours, used voice-overs speaking poetry and tried too hard to be arty. However, it was the only war film I've ever seen that defined the experience of war in a way that I felt it to my bones. It put me, personally in the action. I felt the fear, the fatigue and the hard questions that each man had to deal with, and left me with an appreciation of what it is to be a soldier as well as a total disgust at the futility of it all.

The director, Terrence Maliick, did an outstanding job of conveying all this. He used nature in a way I have never see in a war film. The beauty of Guadacanal from the trees and birds to the native people is shown over and over again in stark contrast to the slaughter of both the Japanese and Americans. The tagline of this movie is "every man fights his own war" and the close-ups of the men's faces manage to show their inner struggles by the use of lighting and perhaps a leaf against the backdrop of nature. There is star power in the cast - Sean Penn, John Cusack, Woody Harelson, Nick Nolte, John Travolta, and George Clooney. They all have small parts and, with the exception of Nolte as the aging Lieutenant Colonel who has been passed over for promotion too many times and must prove himself on the battlefield, they all blend into the composite of soldiers at war that the director was trying to achieve.

The film was true from its very core. So deeply did I sink into the video, that I wasn't bored for one moment. Instead I was there, in the trenches, waiting for the next bullet and captured in the experience. This kind of movie, of course is not for everyone. But for those of us who look for the emotional catharsis that is possible in a work of art, I recommend The Thin Red Line.