"There's only a Thin Red Line between the sane and the mad"

Rating: 10/10 (5 July 2006)

No other film about war captures me as has The Tin Red Line. Repeat viewings are always more satisfying than the last.
Many seem to have missed what "The Thin Red Line" really means as a title, thus the quote from the booklet offered in the Fox Ware Classics DVD presentation.
Recurrent themes are many in this film, spirituality in the face of the horrors of war. No film that I can think of deals with these themes in such a provocative and profound way. Certainly no film I can think of leaves such a lasting impression, nor inspires me to contemplate the nature of war, and indeed humanity itself on so many deep levels.
Others have summarized the story and plot well enough, have dwelt upon the variety of character studies in the film and methodology for achieving these studies. What impressed me the most is that when we finally meet the enemy, in the machine gun bunker on the top of Hill 210 and then later during the "mopping up" is that the enemy is human too! The Japanese prisoners are visibly shaken and terrified of US soldiers they have just fought. They are frustrated, disillusioned, some are praying. A pivotal scene just prior too the assault on the Japanese bivouac shows just a Japanese face buried in the debris of battle, with a voice over comparing the viewer (an American soldier, and the audience or "us") with what that dead Japanese soldier was and hoped to be. He challenges us that we are not different after-all.
Rather than American chest pounding bravado in victory over the "evil Japs" as in many other WWII Pacific Theatre films, we have moments where the enemy has a face, has emotions very like our own leading me to conclude that no matter how righteous the cause, war kills us all, that we all loose something by it's nature.
Many feel that this is an "anti war" film, I'm not sure that this is so. I think TTRL paints an unflinching, profound poetic and philosophical look at war and what it does to men, to our world and to the other "earthlings". The struggle of the newly hatched yet mortally wounded bird in the midst of a battle scene brings this to a haunting reality every time.
I hope that more people come to view this film for more than just another look at war, but for what it truly is, and exploration of what it is to be deeply human, in extraordinary circumstances.