If you love voiceovers, here's your film

Rating: 3/10 (4 September 2004)

War is supposed to be hours of tedium interrupted by moments of terror. At least Mallick has the first part down. The first half hour of TRL is nothing but voiceovers, and meditative ones at that. And he doesn't let up-the last scene has a soldier reflecting on Life, Fate, etc. The lugubrious music begins with Faure's Requium and descends from there. The battle scenes, such as they are, only deepen the musical mood. There's no helmet discipline, so we can admire Sean Penn's do. Many of the all-star cast (Travolta and Clooney for two) are in the film for one bare scene each. For Oceanic nature lovers, there are lots of shots of leaves, grass, birds, mammals, and running water. For the rest of us, there is just too much pomposity and too little action to make this film worth its nearly three hours of running time. (After this, I pulled out The Steel Helmet and watched it again-now *that's* a war film.)