Oh Dear! If Mahler Made War Movies...

Rating: 4/10 (28 February 2002)

The battle for the vital island of Guadalcanal. If the American marines can take this strategic island they will have control of thousands of miles of air and sea territory! But first they must overcome the fierce enemy without - and the painful enemy within!
Please don't compare this with Saving Private Ryan. Not if you think you have the first idea about cinema. This is a totally different style and mood and historically different environment of film. So don't make yourself look overly naive by making empty comparisons. Ta.
The Thin Red Line is an occasionally moving, consistently tedious, curiously uninvolving, overlong and over earnest film which stands as a confusion of performance art video and action picture. The pithy score suggests a consistent profundity which is - ironically - battled against by a frighteningly flowery narrative and a plot which leaps far higher and more manically than the scores of possessed Japanese soldiers do when under close-arms attack! (E.g. Whatever happens to the limelight characters of John's: Savage and Cussack & how did we get from that meaningless jungle camp to the vitally strategic airfield - & many, many more...). The action scenes are handled solidly enough and the performances (before they disappear without explanation!) are uniformly (!) superb. (Nolte is spot on! But what happens to him...!!! Please!!!). But, all in all, this is an uneven mess of a film which constantly forgets where it's going; what it's trying to say and - most importantly of all - who it's trying to save. (Should we fight? Should we flight? Are animals better than us because they're not the warring type? Are the locals not the prime example of a perfect world in their constant summer bliss? Could northern hemisphere people live like that despite the fact that they live in frozen climbs and it's not as idyllic and as verdant and a search for more fertile territory might lead to... but no! This is about a war based on power and not survival so.. so.. how can I justify the constant close-ups of nature in peace. Because nature is peaceful. And universal. And if people don't agree with, erm.. OK. This, of course is not a perfect example of the entire world. But it's representative. Isn't it? I got a very good degree you know...). A case of: 'Why say one important thing clearly when you can attempt ten with little clarity?'. An unfortunate prognosis of a director who had what he thought was a good thing - and attempted to feed us far too much of it!