Beautifully shot and philosophical account of WW2

Rating: 8/10 (17 July 2004)

The Thin Red Line was unfairly overshadowed by the IMO poor and cliché ridden Saving Private Ryan (both made in 1998). It is beautifully shot and well-acted account of the conflict in the pacific island of Guadalcanal.
The film starts with Private Witt (Caviezel) living with the natives of the island. We appreciate the simple and peaceful life that they lead. Caviezel is brilliant as the moral and peaceful private. He is constantly questioning why these people's lives should be disturbed.
Also excellent is Penn as the cynical Sergeant who was only there because he was asked to be. Although I won't delve into each of the characters, all are three-dimensional and none fall into the war movie cliché of fighting because they believe it is their patriotic duty.
The film is deeply philosophical and while it never contradicts itself, it seems as if the same few points are only made but just by a different character and in a slightly different context.
Although the film wasn't made just to contain battle scenes, the battle scenes in TRL manage not to convey the most of the soldiers as gung-ho killing machines. Instead the audience can see the fear conveyed by soldiers and how they don't want to kill the enemy. This is very realistic as according to a program recently, only 2% of the soldiers in WW2 actually shot to kill the enemy. Most of the soldiers just shot anywhere with no intention of killing anyone or even purposely forget to put ammo in their guns so they wouldn't be able to shoot anyone.
One of the amazing things about TRL was that the audience felt sympathy for when the Japanese died. Even though the film didn't follow the Japanese, the scenes of aftermath with the injured Japanese, we understand that they are going through the same as the American soldiers and that they don't want to fight the war.
The only problem with this film is that it is too much too long. It could have been cut to about 2 hours with no loss of coherence or plot.
Final score  8/10