This is a film that will challenge you.

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 1999)

This is a film that will challenge you. It is a haunting epic of the confusion created in the thick of battle. It is a tragic tale of a city ripped to pieces by the american war. It is a tale of a maddening captain and the troops he ships out to fight as though they were just meat popsicles. It is the story of a man, unwilling to kill, who finds the courage to be a hero in his own mind. It is the story of a man, hardened by war, who learns to love his fellow man. It is a journey of a young boy out into the gaping maw of certain doom, and how he survives it.
Terrence Malik rivals his first movie (Badlands) with the most certain movie ever made about what war is like. Unfortunate for the critics and american public, that this Oscar nominated film be tossed aside in View of the most violent anti-american film ever made, Saving Private Ryan. (The point of Ryan confused me more, eight men die saving one? And thats courage?) And Maliks' sweeping camerawork and excellent eye for the big screen just enhance the feeling that you get while watching this film.
Very much like 2001, Solaris, and Seven Samurai, The Thin Red Line uses the audience as one of the characters, not spoonfeeding the pre-teen generation their plotlines. And this is the quality we should start to see more often. Perhaps it was just not time for The Thin Red Line to prosper, but it will shine on long after Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love have faded away.