Racist propaganda and historical fabrication

Rating: 5/10 (9 July 2010)

Many pros and cons have already been detailed by other reviewers, what some see as poetry and philosophy others find pretentious. I can see the merit of both positions. However, the more serious and disturbing aspect of this film is the historical inaccuracy and the racial overtones. In The Thin Red Line, Japanese soldiers (apart from battle scenes) are depicted as children, sometimes naked children, wallowing helplessly. US soldiers and officers are variously depicted, but frequently given vicious and cruel character traits, and the more negative character traits are given to those characters that are played by those actors that appear to have the greater north European ancestry. Is it silly to note or comment on this slant? Imagine we were dealing with black soldiers, and that the darker ones would be portrayed in this way; enough said. The Japanese soldiers as portrayed in this film are largely unrecognizable as the ruthless warriors that history records. The scene where a whole platoon of Japanese soldiers is unable to bring themselves to kill an armed enemy soldier who refuses to surrender is patently absurd. Tie this into the racial overtones I have already described, and we are onto something very unsavory indeed. The film gets 5 for fairly interesting battle scenes, though they are few and far between.