Beautiful but pretentious

Rating: 5/10 (27 February 2003)

The ponderous nature of this film -- the drawn out post-battle scenes, the sporadic shots of trees and birds and leaves uncurling, above all the trite philosophizing -- made this, for me, one of the least moving films to address the nature of war. This is an artist's perspective, which isn't in itself bad, but in that respect the originality of its interpretation falls far short of classics like "Apocalypse Now" and "Slaughterhouse Five". "Saving Private Ryan" paints its characters broadly, but makes no attempt to hide it; it knows its power comes from the amazingly visceral battle scenes. The characters in "The Thin Red Line" are painted just as broadly, only the filmmakers don't seem to know it.