Great art, but, not a better film than Spielberg's.

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 1999)

This motion picture is poetry on film at it's best. Each scene is perfectly in sink with the movie as a whole, while developing many characters in the film as well. In contrast to Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line manages to show the humanity of war, and attempts to give a compassionate sense of these humans which are sent to kill and be killed. It does this much in the way that platoon and full metal jacket did but is even more successfull. It touches upon the bureacracy, hypocrisy, and desensatization of combat but in a more matter of fact way than the two aforementioned movies. The artistic sense which Malick implements in his story-telling is unmatched through his utilization of flash-back and inner-voice. Unfortunately, this is also the one flaw which the movie suffers from. Unintentionally, this film suffers from the same thing all previous war movies before Saving Private Ryan suffered from and that is glorification. No, war is not made out to be great or good, but classical music playing under actions of war and violence are almost a guilty pleasure in an artistic sense. Yes, it creates a sweeping sense emotionally as do great swooping shots through the tall grassy fields, but perhaps this is where Spielberg succeeded. Priv Ryan was artistic but in a brutal way. Spielberg for once gave up much of his sweeping cinematography and went with the hand-held camera for twenty minutes straight, he desensatized you without pointing it out. He put you in battle without making it look cool, if only in retrospect, and he removed color from the film without you even knowing, which were artistic moves but not necessarily for the point of creating art but for the sake of creating an experience still unmatched by Malick. In Priv Ryan the characters are developed because you experience war with them, while in TRL your told who the characters are. In Priv Ryan you don't even get to know who the title character is because that's not important it's a war and there is no compassion in war. Your captain knows your proabably going to die, other-wise he wouldn't be a captain. I enjoyed A Thin Red Line more than Saving Private Ryan, why, because I'm a human. I rather see something beautiful which Malick creates than something real which Spielberg achieved, and the closest anyone will ever come to knowing what war really is like from a film, which will still only ever be a fraction of understanding what those men experienced. A Thin Red Line shows the humanity of war, while Saving Private Ryan shows that there is no humanity in war. Ask a veteran what they remember about war, most won't mention the humaneness. The better war film is Priv Ryan, the better experience is TRL.