Inspiring and Spiritual

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2004)

It was great when this came out because Saving Private Ryan was released the same time and it was sparking a comparison war between both films as they were set around World War 2. I went to see Red Line at the cinema and like everyone else was expecting an explosive war movie like Private Ryan but that wasn't what I got. What we all saw was a human story about men who were in a place and fighting a war that didn't really believe in. The casting was over done and people probably saw it because of John Travolta and George Clooney's names on the front of the poster, that's why I went to see it because I thought `How can you go wrong' but after a while you realised that these two huge actors did not even get 3 minutes on screen and that was great because it paved the way to have some new fresh talent taking the lead roles like the underrated and very talented Ben Chaplin and Jim Cavizel. They held this film along with others to make it what it is and that the best war movie since Apocalypse Now in my opinion. There were many flaws in Private Ryan that could have been foreseen but The Thin Red Line is something else because as well as dealing with the horrors of war it deals with the spiritual side of it. Sean Penn must be putting the performance of his life in this because the scene when he runs to the soldier who has been hit bad in the middle of the battlefield and tries to give him morphine and the young soldier just realises that it's better to die rather than to feel the pain and he asks Penn's character for more morphine to end it , it just brings you to tears because it brings in the normality of how real it was. A lot of people say it is boring but they are not watching it for it's story, they are watching it for the action and after I came out of the cinema everybody was like `It should have had one more battle at the end' but I am glad it didn't because that the easy way to Finnish off a war movie but Terence Malick kept his eye on the story to Finnish it off not the action. Again this is a film and a director who has been criminally ignored by the Academy and I know I should have the attitude of to hell with the Oscar's but it's the Oscars for a lot of people who get remembered and to give Spielberg an Oscar and not Malick then I think it's quite sad as it shows that Hollywood don't really look at a film for what it is, just the success, and I know by now that that's the way it is but it shouldn't be because it's not what you put into the computer to edit it's what your imagination and camerawork can put in the editing process. This is not Apocalypse Now, it's not the Deer Hunter, it is a film that can hold itself without stereotyping any other film and becoming the most original and beautiful war movie in decades.