8 out of 10, this IS a great war film

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 1999)

The Thin Red Line can be described in so many words from poetic to horrifying. The visuals are among anything you have ever seen in any war film, and that's only the beginning. There are so many great things going for this movie that it is one you might not want to miss if you are into the war genre. And even though some may not like it in their own opinion, criticizing this very artistic picture by Terrance Mallick as some distasteful film critics did is nearly a crime.
The plot is very simple and lets itself at you 10 minutes into the film. A rifle infantry known as Charlie Company are set to raid Guadalcanal Island ordered in a 5 minute performance by John Travolta and led throughout the film by Nick Nolte in a very intense performance. As the large group of mostly young soldiers sets foot on the island to fight the Japenese the action jumps in right away. Throughout the following 2 hours of almost nonstop war different platoons are given different orders to take over the island step by step. Each platoon has their own result, some involving major sucess while others suffering in loss.
A trouble The Thin Red Line ran into for being released this January is that it's being severly compared to another very different WWII film Saving Private Ryan. Terrance Mallick and Steven Spielburg have a much different vision on war, different storyline, different location, different enemy, and different characters. Saving Private Ryan's intensity was for it's considerable realism throughout while The Thin Red Line's intensity may not be as real but extremely horrifying. If you even think about comparing these two films you minus will throw in all the other WWII films like Das Boot into the mix, because they are all very different.
There are so many great things in Terrance Mallick's film it's almost hard to name them all. The visuals were absolutly spectacular which made most of the war scenes not only to make you feel that you were in the war but if you were surrounded. The location which was reportadly shot on Guadalcanal is also incredible which is what makes some of the scenes so scary from the amount of surroundings the soldiers were in during their battles. The sound effects and soundtrack are both outstanding which help give a lot of meaning to the mood and feel for the movie.
The cast to The Thin Red Line is something quite unique and unusual. There are so many familiar faces in this film that it's hard to keep track of them all and the young cast members (especially the main character played by Jim Caviezel) are also superb. It's surprising to see though how little screen time many actors like Woody Harrelson, John Travolta, and especially George Clooney (not even a minute) were given. Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and John Cusack all gave wonderful performances with very memorable characters. One thing that added a lot of emotion in some scenes of this 3 hour epic were the flashbacks to give character background. This gave the characters enough realism to make some of their deaths very dramatic.
Out of the eight of ten I gave it there are only a few problems. One of which is the narratives that seem to never end and it's hard to imagine some of these soldiers speaking so poetically with such symbolism. But the main problem The Thin Red Line had can be thanked to 20th Century Fox. When Terrance Mallick was done filming he supposedly had over eight hours of film (much of which was probubly lost in the editing room since Mallick is known to aim for perfection in his films) and when he gave 20th Century Fox the rough draft of the film they wanted it to be cut down drastically. This caused the film to feel a little choppy in many parts and could have been fixed if they let Mallick release his original version of the film instead of the very cut 3 hour version. Hopefully there will be a directors cut released on DVD to help fill in the taken out scenes.
Overall this is definitely a good choice. Terrance Mallick's direction is a one of a kind experiance and if you haven't seen his earlier films like Badlands you will be surprised at how different his films can be. Note all the symbolizm and camera effects throughout, they make the most effective difference.