The new "Apocalypse Now" it ain't

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 1998)

Great, great disappointment! There is no way, that "The Thin Red Line" is deeper and sharper than "Saving Private Ryan", as many people expected. The film itself is very pretentious, wanting to be the "Apocalypse Now" of the 90's. Well, it is not. The movie is very "over-produced", in terms of its extra-aesthetism, if it's possible to say so. I mean, parrots are beautiful birds, but do you really have to show close-ups of them four or five times? And shooting the sunlight, slowly coming through the trees is like reinventing a bicycle.
In spite of the interesting characters and well-conducted narration, many of them, including the ones, played by famous actors are not developed enough for the audience to remember them. Pretty important characters, like Nick Nolte's and John Cusack's are lost in the 3rd hour. And if there was a nomination for the most senseless cameo ever - George Clooney could get one.
In my opinion the film suffers from the poor editing. Watching the movie, I got an impression, that the production team was under the pressure to put the film in the regular movie-theater time frame (<= 3hours), so a lot of important things got lost. I would be really looking forward to the director's cut of "The Thin Red Line". Otherwise, the film is simply weak.