a critics dream: a boring, pretentious, artful mess of a movie

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 1999)

Going in to this movie, I promised myself that I would not compare it to Saving Private Ryan. Ryan is one of the best war movies ever made. But I found myself doing it throughout the whole movie. This movie is so incoherent that I lost interest the last hour. Yes it is well made, and some images are truly memorable but the movie has no focus. It is content in being so "un-hollywood" that it loses the audience completely. I'm sure that Terrence Malick wanted to make a different type of war film, but the movie is too pretentious. the voice overs try to be so deep that they become a distraction. No characters are well drawn, the actors are just scenery really. I believe it was a mistake to have so many cameos by such known actors,they are also a distraction. I know that Private Ryan is more "commercial" but it at least presents a story that involves the viewer. I know that this is the type of movie that critics love,because the public at large doesn't, they back a film because of its "artfulness". I also believe that Oscar voters were completely wrong to nominate this film, The Truman Show was left out, A Simple Plan was ignored, why they would shut these movies out and nominate this piece of pseudo-intellectual garbage is a total injustice!