Not worth the time to watch it...

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2004)

I understand that many people look at how well a movie is made in order to grade it. This movie was well made, beautiful, thoughtful, but finally, horrible and boring.
There was just too much stupidity and shallowness in this movie for it to be enjoyable. Big headliner actors with less than three minutes in the movie, specifically John Travolta, George Clooney, and John Cusack. They were there just for star attraction. They add nothing to the movie at all. Any no-name bit player could have handled their parts.
Even if you liked the movie's style, the soldiers were portrayed as either stupid morons, war-crazed psychos, or crying babies. The main character spent his time looking at birds, light filtering through the trees, and the natives while dreaming of his wife and thinking about life, death, and some unspecified afterlife with lots of slow motion video and unrelated images edited together.
For example, at one point, a private (played by Woody Harrelson) goes to throw a grenade and grabs just the pin, pulling it and leaving the grenade on his belt (which is very hard to believe in the first place). But, instead of realizing his blunder and making a second grab for the grenade to toss it before it detonates (and he has plenty of time to try), he just sits there looking at the pin and the other soldiers around him with an idiotic look on his face, until finally the grenade explodes fatally wounding him. Then we watch for three minutes while he dies and makes bizarre demands of his friends to write and tell his wife he died heroically instead of by stupidly blowing off his own back side.
The higher brass are portrayed as cold, stupid, war-crazed maniacs interested only in getting their own way for glory sake as they issue orders that make no sense at all. The primary Lt. Colonel of the story tells the leadership under him that they have to take this hill by charging the Japanese with a direct, frontal approach. He says there is no way to flank their positions. They have to go straight up the front. Then you look at the hill and it's just a large, wide, rolling hill with nothing preventing a flank from either side! No cliffs, no steep rock faces, nothing. It's about fifty-fifty between a frontal attack or a flank attack. Made no sense at all.
Maybe I'm naive, but it's my opinion that the soldiers who fought in World War II were brave men, who did what they did because it needed to be done. I don't believe that 95% of them were idiots, fools, crybabies, maniacs, or introverted writers. I also know better than to believe that our purpose for taking the Pacific islands like Guadalcanal was for "property" as one character states in the film. It was a major, strategic base for the Japanese in that part of the Pacific.
The Thin Red Line is a beautifully made film that portrays war as stupid and soldiers as morons or psychos. I think that is a slap in the face of the hundreds of thousands of brave soldiers who fought for and achieved the freedom of world at that time. Many of them died for that goal and we all own them a debt we can never repay. Movies such as this, while beautifully made, do a great disservice to the reputations and heroism of these fine men.
Do yourself a favor and find another movie to watch. Saving Private Ryan or Tora, Tora, Tora are much better choices. The Thin Red Line simply doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as these other films.