A Classic In Its Own Right!!!

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2000)

All the fuss about Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan and which one was the better of the two was totally uncalled for. These are two movies looking at and focusing on two very different themes with the only common grounds being the situation in which they were shot.
While SPR had the plot it still looked like a Hollywood movie and this was evident at the attempt to be politically correct. Like most Hollywood movies it comes out making the Americans looking politically correct as ever.
Thin Red Line on the other hand was not about the war or about being politically correct. It was *the journey* through the war and it did the most amazing job on dealing with the emotions, the voices, the thoughts which run through the minds of any soldier who faces the situation that the characters in TRL faced. One thing which I will have to admit after seeing this movie is that Terrence Mallik is a genius and a legend in his own. The way the cameras drifted far away to focus on a bird with broken wings struggling for survival, with the sounds of explosions on the background was a brilliant way to depict the same feeling within man himself in a similar situation. The only problem about TRL was that the characters or atleast most of them were just characters and not names which I remembered. This lack of connection between the audience was the only let down.
To settle the battle between TRL and SPR, I gave both 9`s out of 10; But I gave TRL a 9 when I was thinking of giving it a 10 but thought that would be unfair to some movies which are better and I gave SPR a 9 while thinking that I should give it an 8 but felt that would be too disrespectful for something which garnished so many academy awards. Thin Red Line has to be one of the best movies related to war, ever made in the same league as APOCALYPSE and FULL METAL but surely better than SPR!! Take your time before you come up with your next one Mr. Mallik as long as it is worth the wait and that Thin Red Line definitely was!!!