Unfortunate

Rating: Null/10 (18 January 1999)

Maybe my expectations of this film were too high as a result of Malick's previous films "Days of Heaven" and particularly "Badlands," but "The Thin Red Line," while obviously more ambitious than your usual Hollywood dreck, was a big letdown. The photography and conception of the battle scenes were amazing, the score was better than any Hans Zimmer score I've ever heard, and there were many scenes of unbelievable beauty. But that overly-arty-poetic narration was like fingernails across a chalkboard after a while. I guess Malick was trying for a "haunting" quality akin to that of his former films, but it just wasn't working in this film. The narration of his previous two films worked because the content was more fleshed out, more grounded, rather than pie-in-the-sky like this time around. And the character who might possibly be considered the central figure, Witt, was frustratingly impossible to identify with or even care about. And just for the record, I'm not comparing this film to "Saving Private Ryan" because I have not seen "Saving Private Ryan."