Malick's Stunning Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 2010)

A glorious and achingly beautiful movie about the psychological toll war takes on the men who fight it.
Released the same year as Steven Spielberg's WWII combat film "Saving Private Ryan," "The Thin Red Line" exists on a different and higher plane of film-making from Spielberg's. "Private Ryan" is an exercise in technical meticulousness but has a giant zero at its center. "The Thin Red Line" gets into the heads of the characters involved and tells us what being in a war means to them and what it's forcing them to leave behind. Malick's film is haunting, ambiguous and stunning, but no wonder Spielberg's in your face patriotic anthem won all of the attention and all of the awards -- ambiguity has never been a big seller.
Grade: A+