God-Awful Bad (Possible Spoilers!)

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2003)

First of all, I hope that any spoilers I drop aren't too obvious, I won't be using specific character names for them.
I saw this movie when it first came out and have hated it ever since. I literally checked my watch every five minutes of this torturous three hour disaster of celluloid. I have always found Malick to be a wholly overrated director, and this film only further convinces me.
First of all, the man cast just about cast as many big name stars and favorable character actors as he possibly could, and then slapped all of their names on the posters and in the opening credits, even though many of them appear very briefly. I don't consider George Clooney appearing for two minutes at the very end as some afterthought drill instructor reason to have his name get prime billing. And I really like George Clooney. Besides this, I found most of the acting (both featured roles and "supporting" cast) to be very very poor. Sean Penn and Jim Cazaviel are supposed to be award winning stage and screen actors, what the hell happened here?
To add to the frustration of the sheer number of characters and the fact that you never get to know or feel sympathy for any of them, Malick has some of the most wretched and painfully bad poetry I've heard since my high school English class as part of the voice-overs spoken by at least 7 characters. And if you can't recognize the different voices, seven different narrations gets very confusing very quickly. It almost doesn't matter though, as the dialogue is inane and as boring as the poetry. I wanted to pull my hair out.
In addition, the plot lines of featured characters are so predictable it's ridiculous. You know exactly who's going to die, watch his best friend die, lead the unit into certain death, get divorced while overseas, etc. Any time the new situation was introduced, it was so damn obvious just how it would be resolved.
In summation, as eloquently as I can possibly say: This "film" sucks ass! Please, do not waste your precious time (and so much of it!) on this piece of trash. If you really have to see a war film, please watch something worthwhile like "Platoon," "Saving Private Ryan," or "Apocalypse Now."

"The Thin Red Line" is absolutely awful and you will be p***ed off, at the director and your own dumb ass, for having been suckered into watching it. Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.