Yawn

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 1999)

Gotta agree with the detractors here. The philosophical undercurrent of this film was merely a trickle. Besides, philosophy delivered with a southern accent just loses something with me. I didn't feel this film said anything new or particularly revealing. Some of the battle scenes were interesting, and I liked the way Malick treated the Japanese soldiers as humans rather than monsters as in Private Ryan. I also found the parade of grimy faces intriguing. I'd imagine that in real war, soldiers don't stick around long and are either reassigned, killed, or sent home, so I guess this was Malicks attempt at capturing that aspect. Kinda neat, but it doesn't make up for the other shortcomings. The most positive feature of TRL was the beauty of the filmmaking. The scenery was quite surreal in juxtaposition with the ugliness of war. However, and with all due respect for Malick and his crew, if you film on a tropical island, you're going to get a lot of beautiful footage. Beautiful is pretty much the default setting for tropical islands. So, much of the credit there goes to mother nature.
I'm going to see this again tomorrow to see if I feel any different about it. Maybe my viewpoint will change after that.