Preachy and vague, untrue to the flavor of the book

Rating: 3/10 (18 January 1999)

I've read the entire James Jones WWII trilogy, especially "From Here to Eternity" and "The Thin Red Line" several times over the last 20 years. "The Thin Red Line" remains my favorite book about combat in World War II. I eagerly anticipated this movie. I understand that directors will often take a story in different directions than an author intended in order to make a comfortable shift between written and film media. But somehow the James Jones is gone from this movie. There is certainly some thoughtfulness and hidden depth in the characters in the novel, but his characters were first real and human. Sgt Welsh would have laughed and wanted to kick that frightened private in the ass to send him on his way. Under no circumstances would he have pontificated and spouted all this mumbo-jumbo in front of the men, unless of course he was completely drunk.
Technically speaking the film is beautiful. Some of the combat scenes really came close, but the whole thing is completely derailed by these random philosophical ramblings and interminable digressions to hammer the "man and nature" theme into the audiences heads. I'm annoyed at Malick because he blew it, and we won't see anybody else make this story again, and that means it will never be done right, and this book really deserved it. I'll have to try and catch the 1964 version. Bad as it might be, it can't be as lousy as this one. My advice is, pretend you never saw the movie and read the book, don't let this movie turn you off to the novel, it is truly an infantryman's novel.