Beautiful and enticing but yet not perfect

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2008)

There's no doubt that Terrence Malick is a lover of nature. I learned this from his painstakingly long The New World. Although this was almost a three hour movie, it held my interest from start to ending. This is not an action flick, but that's not the thing that kept my interest in this movie. This film draws a solid line between God's beauty of the earth and nature, and man's inhumanity and destruction of it.
There are many attractive shots of the Guadalcanal landscapes, hillsides, beaches, and animals at work in nature. In the mist of such a gorgeous place, man's destruction of WWII engulfs it. This maybe no Private Ryan in its depiction of war, but seeing the casualties of both American and Japanese soldiers is more saddening and painful to watch. Why? This movie has some of the most powerful battle sequences I have ever seen. From the bombardment and slaughter on the hillside to the grisly hand-to-hand combat in the fog, they're captured brilliantly. The cinematography by John Toll and score by Hans Zimmer absolutely capture the tone and pulled me right into the gates of Hades.
Compared to Saving Private Ryan, which is a patriotic film, The Thin Red Line is an anti-war picture. Most of the characters are young men who don't want to fight, die, or even kill. They only fight because they're ordered. There are no heroes which Private Ryan depicted. There is no patriotism.
There aren't many popular actors in the movie either, at least ones that weren't popular in 1998. Adrian Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin and many other faces lead the movie. I have to say though that it was a bit difficult to know who was who since all of them are: young, wearing helmets, and smeared with dirt and blood. They're voices even sound the same. This got on my nerves a bit when each of the actors would give their share of narration. I would often ask myself: Which character is now narrating? Actors John Travolta and George Clooney are minimal in the film. The only actors that really stood out for me were Sean Penn, Elias Koteas and Nick Nolte who really shine the screen.
Because of the hell these soldiers go through, their lives ultimately change. The question of the film brings us this question: How can such a beautiful world be consumed by such inhumanity and madness? People probably dismissed this movie of even existing in 1998 and its 7 Oscar nominations. Personally, I found this to be a more engaging movie than Ryan. I felt for the characters, I did not for Private Ryan. We're all human.
Now I'm not saying that this is the best war film ever made. I felt the characters' narrations were overused, overdone, and confusing. I also felt that the director had way too many shots of nature; I'll say again they were all beautiful, but they distracted the movie from the plot. I felt that there was much more to the story than was shown. Perhaps there'll be a director's cut or an extended version. 8/10