A gripping, moving, poetic vision of war.

Rating: 8/10 (10 January 1999)

Terrence Mallick has delivered his third film in the director's chair and it delivers with a powerful punch. The film's centerpiece is the Japanese invasion of Guadalcanal Island, one of the worst battles in the pacific of WWII. The dynamic scope of the film is breathtaking and the imagery is beyond compare, and it's in the poetic verse and hypnotic images of war where the film soars very high. The film unfolds through the eyes and thoughts of the men who fought and died on Guadalcanal. These images are spliced and sewn together, as if Mallick is making a giant quilt of war images.
However, when the film sores, it soars high, but when it lands it seems to lose connective tissue. Many characters come in and out of the film without any real meaning or substance. The promotional campaign for the film touted its long list of Hollywood heavy-weights, and it's here where the film flounders. Cameos from John Travolta, John Cusack, George Clooney, and Woody Harrelson are forced in and out of the picture without any real meaning or purpose. Sean Penn, at times, looks and acts as if this were a squeal to "Casualties of War". Perhaps the saddest part of this whole experience was the fact that after almost three hours I felt that I didn't really know the two lead characters. I felt cheated.
I personally wish Mallick had given the audience more substance and confined the action more on the two central characters rather than introducing fragments of many characters. My biggest fear is that audiences are expecting another "Saving Private Ryan" with a lot of star power and they will be hugely disappointed. While "Ryan" follows the standard, straight-forward rules for unfolding a story, "Red Line" relies heavily on the abstract, philosophical images of war, and it is through these images that audiences will be introduced to the slaughter that occurred on Guadalcanal. Cinematographer John Toll (Legends of the Fall, Braveheart) uses breathtaking, beautiful images of an island in the Pacific as a backdrop to the ugly, brutal, and often savage images of war, and it is in these images where "Red Line" soars higher and farther than "Ryan" could hope to.
If audiences grasp these images and take them to heart, then this is a three-hour journey well worth the time. This film will be talked about and dissected long after other WWII dramas are forgotten. I recommend this film, giving it 8 out of 10.