Possibly the very worst movie I have ever seen.

Rating: 1/10 (17 January 1999)

Trying to tag along with the popularity of Saving Private Ryan, a far superior film which deals with American soldiers in Europe in World War II, The Thin Red Line's advertising attempts to present this as a war movie about US soldiers in the Pacific theater (Guadalcanal- a turning point in the war against the Japanese). The actual war takes up about 10% of this overly long, completely boring and utterly inane piece of garbage. The rest of the movie is devoted to scenes dedicated to brooding soldiers; moronic voiceovers over what appears to be spare National Geographic documentary footage of the rain forest; abstruse philosophic ruminations which make this more of a series of disjointed monologues seemingly edited by first year film students; and just about every cliche of dying soldiers in agony. During the actual Battle for Guadalcanal US forces won a hard fought victory against fanatically dedicated and courageous Imperial Japanese troops defending an important airfield. One would wonder how any American soldiers accomplished anything based on this movie's relentless characterizations of American soldiers as terrified and reluctant, ill-lead and confused. There are banal references to incompetent officers (Nick Nolte), gratuitous but meaningless scenes with big-name actors which contribute nothing to this horrendus jumble (John Travolta, George Clooney) and Sean Penn essentially reprising his role as a Sergeant from that Vietnam movie with Michael J. Fox. The movie is interspersed with scenes of happy aboriginal natives, and bizarre "art school" flashbacks and stream of consciousness ramblings. I suppose this is supposed to stand in contrast to the war, but it simply looks like three different movies edited together in a blender. This movie is a disgrace, an insult to US veterans and a comlpete waste of time. It was one of the few movies that I not only wanted to leave, but also ask for my money back.