Beautiful and disturbing.

Rating: 10/10 (18 October 2004)

I was deeply moved by this film. Sometimes brooding and harsh, sometimes beautiful, The Thin Red Line looks at war from more points of view than any war film I have ever seen.
It may be that these many points of view hurt the film's cohesion for some in the audience, but for me the combined effect of each character's thoughts and experience is what gives the film its great humanity.
This is not a flag-waving war picture, nor is it an action-adventure film, and yet the battle scenes have a mad, intense terror that faithfully capture James Jones' depiction of close combat. There is courage aplenty, compassion, agony, stone-cold fear and red-hot murderous rage. There are soldiers who want medals and recognition, soldiers who will do what they can, and soldiers who just want to stay alive. And always-- the gulf between officers and enlisted men,-- a key theme in Jones' novel.
We Americans have always looked upon WWII as a--I hesitate to use this word-- "moral" war; a war we undertook only after great provocation against two ruthless, aggressive enemies. I for one have always believed this, and do still. But..., my God, these were YOUNG men. They mostly wanted only to live..., only to LIVE. Can we really understand such irreparable loss?
More than any before it, this film makes us look directly at this horrific sacrifice. All Quiet On The Western Front, with Lew Ayres, comes closest. But of course, that was a film based on a German novel.
I'm getting emotional now. But that's the effect this film had on me. I hope I've conveyed it in some measure. I leave you with James Jones' "Dedication" to his novel, The Thin Red Line:
This book is cheerfully dedicated to those greatest and most
heroic of all human endeavors, WAR and WARFARE; may they never
cease to give us the pleasure, excitement, and adrenal stimulation that we need, or provide us with the heroes, the presidents and leaders, the monuments and museums which we erect to them in the name of PEACE.