Coffee house poetry meets emotional anathema.

Rating: 4/10 (18 January 1999)

Before you can sit down and watch about this movie, you must ask yourself what it is that you are expecting.
Those expecting Saving Private Ryan (which came out the same year) will find themselves lost and flailing in Malick's unconventional movie-making. Those expecting Platoon will find a whole different kind of grittiness, and a different kind of atmosphere. Apocalypse Now is the closest of the greats, but a wholly unfair comparison; The Thin Red Line can not share company with those movies.
There are many things to praise about TRL, but the most evident and obvious is the power of the cinemetography. TRL is beautiful and vast and the sense of overwhelming immersion in the scenery is breathtaking. That immersion, unfortunately, has trouble carrying over to the movie itself.
It is arguable that Malick does not create movies for the masses, and indeed, the masses seem to congregate in large crowds at the exits. Some find tremendous art in TRL, but while I recognize the effort, I fault the workmanship.
The poetry of TRL is in the cinemetography, and unfortunately, the voice overs and curiously jumpy plot line detract from the overall experience instead of adding to it, as was surely the intention. The characters melt into one another, each a drama all his own, and while that may be the makings for greatness, the formula was wrong.
Instead of feeling submerged in a vast war or many internal wars, the staccato movement from character to character eventually numbs the viewer in a way that removes from the emotional commitment which would have been the difference between this and an aweing movie.
Instead, with no emotional investment, when the end (finally) comes, the viewer is left with very little they did not take in themselves. Even at the end, Malick continually teases us, as it appears that the movie will end but yet drags on many times before it does. It got to the point that I was afraid after the credits were rolling that another scene would sneak its way into the movie.
Sure, the pretext is simple enough to grasp. Man vs. Man. What is the nature of man? Why war? Nature is beautiful: Man destroys it. All these, I got within the first twenty minutes. The beautiful island, the natives, the gator slinking back into the mud...
The poetry is there, but between the lines are travesty. A movie that might have been. In its beauty, TRL holds too much ugliness and detachment. I could not submit myself to the greatness of the movie because its failings were too many. Some may be able to dredge the meaning from the quagmire of TRL, but I could not come up without the mud covering it.
TRL is a movie that, perhaps, if viewed again, one might find some gem that escaped unsullied. Unfortunately (for me?), I couldn't stomach another session of its failed promises.